What to Do with an Old Stadium
March 19, 2018 9:20 PM   Subscribe

Two uses for unused stadiums. The first is in Osaka. The second is in England: Highbury Square
posted by MovableBookLady (27 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
What shall we do with the unused stadium?
What shall we do with the unused stadium?
What shall we do with the unused stadium?
Erlye in the morning

Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Erlye in the morning

Build a housing expo in Osaka
Build a housing expo in Osaka
Build a housing expo in Osaka
Erlye in the morning

Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Erlye in the morning

Build apartment blocks on the Arsenal ground
Build apartment blocks on the Arsenal ground
Build apartment blocks on the Arsenal ground
Erlye in the morning

Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Way hey, urban renewal
Erlye in the morning
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:10 PM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


If they'd left the pitch in the old Arsenal stadium and made it residents only I know people who probably would have traded their first born to buy a flat nevermind spent half a million quid. That seems like a wasted opportunity.
posted by fshgrl at 10:28 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


The crazy thing is, I've lived in Japan for a decade now and been to Osaka (and Namba specifically) countless times, and it was only a month or two that my wife found out that Namba Parks is where there used to be a baseball stadium. I'd always thought it was just named for the sort of open-air feel it had. The interesting thing is that the gymnasium/indoor stadium they still use for sumo tournaments in March is within spitting distance of Namba Parks, which suggests that, in the past, it was a hell of a part of town to live in if you were a fan of sports.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:52 PM on March 19, 2018


This sort of thing happened to some of the Roman stadiums/amphitheatres. For example, the Arles Amphitheatre:
“With the fall of the Empire in the 5th century, the amphitheatre became a shelter for the population and was transformed into a fortress with four towers . . . The structure encircled more than 200 houses, becoming a real town, with its public square built in the centre of the arena and two chapels, one in the centre of the building, and another one at the base of the west tower.”
posted by D.C. at 11:30 PM on March 19, 2018


Not to mention the eponymous Colosseum.
posted by sjswitzer at 11:56 PM on March 19, 2018


The Houston Astrodome is the most famous example of this dilemma. The city government can't bring themselves to tear down their only real landmark, yet no one is willing to pony up the cash to do anything with it, so it just sits there and decays.
posted by Beholder at 12:51 AM on March 20, 2018


That article uses the adjective "magnificent" to describe Namba Parks. Forgive me, but I'll come back when I've got this eye roll over with. Looks great from the air. Looks much like any other shopping centre from the ground. Does not look like a park.

Hiroshima's old baseball stadium (although demolished) hasn't got anything in it's place yet, and the new stadium has been open since 2009. Until something is sorted out, you can visit the regular beer festivals, where you can sample quality ales from around the world for the knock-down price of 1000 yen a pop (yes that's 10 dollars folks). Or Mediya has a nice selection for 700 yen, no entrance fee necessary. Sigh.

So your choices are:

a) overpriced housing property investments
b) housing expo
c) shopping monstrosity, with a few green bits
d) overpriced beer

If this were SimCity, I'd convert it to a public park.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 2:13 AM on March 20, 2018


See also Lucca, where the Roman amphitheatre was converted to residential property and a piazza, and still is.
posted by Segundus at 2:29 AM on March 20, 2018


Converted to apartments you say? In London you say? Where do they get their ideas?

Someone should write a book, 1001 previous uses for sites that are now London apartments. If someone could find a way to ship in haunted native American burial grounds to London someone would build an apartment on it without a second thought.
posted by biffa at 2:48 AM on March 20, 2018 [10 favorites]


Only the exterior walls of Arsenal Stadium were kept. The flats and gardens they built inside are amazingly bland, even by London luxury flats standards. I know they weren't trying to build a tourist attraction, but they've somehow managed to build the opposite - it's remarkably oppressive inside.

I note there are never any people in the gardens - the feeling of being surrounded by people watching isn't helped by there being no tall trees or hedges or other visual barriers.
posted by grahamparks at 3:15 AM on March 20, 2018


Three Rivers Stadium was transformed in a parking lot for the taxpayer funded stadium that they built next door to it. Two decades later, it's still a parking lot.
posted by octothorpe at 3:59 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I note there are never any people in the gardens - the feeling of being surrounded by people watching isn't helped by there being no tall trees or hedges or other visual barriers.

I couldn't quite tell from the article if the gardens were open to the public, or only to residents. Either way, seems like a poor design choice.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 4:48 AM on March 20, 2018


I thought the primary use of unused stadiums in Japan was to have a final showdown with your best friend and yell "KANEDA!" and "TETSUO!" at each other.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:05 AM on March 20, 2018 [13 favorites]


Two landmark stadiums here were abandoned. One of them was the first grass surface on a sports stadium in Portugal, and also featured a velodrome and athletics track. It was demolished to make buildings in the 70s, with most of the space remaining empty. The other was home to the third biggest club in the city, who sold the stadium to the metro builders to pay off debts and build a new stadium, and in a long, sad story where the president swindled the club out of most of the money, the lot where the stadium was supposed to be built turned out to be an underground lake (although, let's be honest here, and the article even points that out, the name of that area is almost literally "water pocket") and the club nearly went out of existence.

On both, almost all that's left of them are some "ruins" from old stands. Top notch planning around here.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:28 AM on March 20, 2018


if the gardens were open to the public, or only to residents

You can wander in, but they're not a public park or anything, so I think intended for residents only.
posted by grahamparks at 5:48 AM on March 20, 2018


The obvious thing to do with Highbury would have been to turn it into a library.
posted by MattWPBS at 6:05 AM on March 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


How long before there's an ornamental flowerbed reading "WENGER OUT"?
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 6:11 AM on March 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


The fact they are, right now, building stadiums that are design to take up massive, massive amounts of space, and serve only one purpose, is practically criminal. They should, at the outset, be designed with a later purpose in mind, easily transformable, etc.
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:27 AM on March 20, 2018


The old (and new) Arsenal stadiums are just down the road from where I live. The local story is that they had to turn the pitch area of the old stadium into gardens rather than build on it because so many former fans had their ashes scattered there.
posted by Fuchsoid at 7:48 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kind of fitting that it should be a place of silent reflection.
posted by MattWPBS at 7:51 AM on March 20, 2018


so many former fans had their ashes scattered there

... welp, that's the last time I visit my friend there after dark...
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:54 AM on March 20, 2018


Turning old stadia into housing is a great idea! It's certainly better than the high altar to consumerism that is the Mall of America (which I only recently learned used to be a stadium). The Fallout series shows us another model: in the post-apocalyptic future, a stadium, with its high walls, can be a city-state just like the old days of Italy.
posted by dbx at 8:31 AM on March 20, 2018


octothorpe: "Three Rivers Stadium was transformed in a parking lot for the taxpayer funded stadium that they built next door to it. Two decades later, it's still a parking lot."

I have to call kind of foul on this one. There are still some lots between Heinz Field and PNC Park, but it's mostly been filled with buildings - offices, hotels, restaurants. There's far more going on there than when Three Rivers was standing.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:28 AM on March 20, 2018


They've built around the old site but other than Stage AE the footprint of Three Rivers is still parking.
posted by octothorpe at 9:53 AM on March 20, 2018


I never knew that Namba Parks used to be a stadium, which is pretty neat I guess. Even though I lived there when it just opened I never actually went there because if I was in the area for shopping it would have been in Shinsaibashi, Denden town or maybe Horie (which were the main shopping areas that everyone went to at the time, not sure about now).

If you ever do decide to visit Namba Parks there is a shrine in the shape of a huge demon head not too far away.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:06 PM on March 20, 2018


I worked on the local paper in Highbury in 2000/01, when the planning issues were being discussed around the move to “Ashburton Grove,” as the (now Emirates) site was known back then.

One of my colleagues interviewed the planning consultant brought in by Arsenal to help find them a new home when they finally decided they’d outgrown Highbury.

“So how did you go about it?” asks my colleague.
“Well, I just sort of pointed at the map and said, ‘What about that big empty space next to Highbury?’,” the planning consultant replies, jovially.
posted by penguin pie at 2:01 PM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


A photograph of the one in Osaka is a clue in Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth, a mystery novel translated by Alfred Birnbaum.
posted by Rash at 9:31 PM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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