I know of nobody who has taken a vacation there [KC] (maybe a day as part of a road trip, but not as the primary destination).

I did. My wife wanted to take me somewhere for a weekend (from Dallas) for my 50th birthday a few years ago and I decided I wanted to go to Kansas City, specifically to see the co-located Negro Leagues and American Jazz Museums. Got a great tip from here to see the cache of items salvaged from the sinking of the steamship Arabia too. No family there. Didn't go anywhere else. Just KC. My first thought was Cooperstown, but I thought that would be more than a weekend trip.

The next year she chose the more touristy Santa Fe for her 50th.

THis has to be a parody. Phoenix has a burgeoning art and restaurant scene, all kinds of weird hipster stuff going on in a way not seen on the coasts and lots of basically pleasurable things. And what's happening in Mesa? Kind of bits of everything, like a wild blender of Americana and Mexicana.
Scottsdale doesn't so much suck as is completely fungible. Anything okay there you can find lots of other places with some money.And some of the bad of those places is magnified there pretty intensely.

Phoenix is weird and gross and not THAT arty, but it's at least weird and gross. Scottsdale is, as you say, well, it's there. And that's about it.

Eh, its dammed if you do, dammed if you don't. The cost of of a GHG-free energy portfolio is so huge

This is the rub. Capitalists see any loss of money RIGHT NOW on the exact same level of damned as loss of life, nature, and/or 1000x the money later.

I would argue that it has never existed, other than to be host to an airport

In its defense, it does have the best-named airport, at least since NYC rechristened theirs JFK (seriously New Yorkers, you willingly relinquish the tongue-pleasing Idelwild but Sixth Avenue is sacrosanct?)

It's true that Scottsdale is somewhat generic - but of course the weather is spectacular, and with nice views. It just crushes the alternative.

I wouldn't plan a vacation there unless I still played golf, though.

As for Phoenix, when I went there for the Super Bowl - the game ended around 7 pm local time - by 8:30 pm every restaurant and bar in the downtown area had closed for the night except for the Dan Majerle's tourist trap bar, and that had few people in it.

Dallas was the same way when I was there on a night the Cowboys won their first Super Bowl in more than a decade (game was not in Dallas, of course). I was told that the culture in Dallas was such that everyone would go to parties with friends and family to watch the Cowboys, not watch at a sports bar and stick around all night afterwards. And of course that was many, many years ago.

Maybe Phoenix stopped sucking in the last decade. I suppose anything's possible.

Idlewild.

That sounds like a fair generalization about Dallas, at least in the 1990s when fewer people lived near downtown. Dallas tends to be a city that does sleep, and gets up early the next morning :)

But would it also be true of all cities well over on the car side of the car/public-transit continuum (hence Phoenix as well)? There is no point partying till all hours at bars if there's no bus or train to take home.

I lived for a time in Dallas during the 90s. An absolute ghost town at night. Even Deep Ellum looked deserted at night. But the gol darned LBJ would be bumper to bumper and those stupid line dancing places out on the highway would be packed.

yeah, I knew a gal in Dallas BITD (she's now a judge btw), and every time I visited I told her to find me any sign of life whatsoever. she took me all over the place, but I never was impressed.

I like Houston even less, tbh.

Pat Rapper - I also did KC and Santa Fe in back to back years (reversed order), part of an annual friends-trip where we all live in different parts of the country. Ok, we only did KC because one guy lives there and we also hit other places on that trip, but still...
(I preferred Santa Fe, but I digress.)

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I think Nashville is a FAR more attractive market, but I get the allure of Vegas.
Same.

Again, I make no claims for Dallas as a city of feverish nightlife, but the "Uptown" area and the Bishop Arts district in Oak Cliff are very lively places, thanks to the kind of convection current that pulls younger people back to live near city centers. Both areas were pretty sleepy 30 years ago, for sure. And nothing in cities like this is going to make the impression one gets from parts of NY/Chicago/San Francisco. They've just evolved very differently.

To get back to the thread topic, I know nothing about Las Vegas but perhaps that contrast between relatively centered cities and dispersed car cities is important for MLB with its nightly events. To the extent that franchises like the Reds and Pirates are viable – both are apparently worth over $1B so they can't be too moribund – it was crucial at some point to have downtown stadiums, where the older transit networks still converge. By contrast you can have a successful MLB franchise in Arlington TX or Anaheim CA because there's a huge number of people within a reasonable driving radius. But maybe not in Orlando or San Antonio, larger than Cincinnati or Pittsburgh while smaller than LA or DFW but just as dispersed.

This comes up often in such threads but it may also be hard to generalize about. There just aren't enough examples and each situation is unique. Maybe if they'd built the Rays' stadium in some ideal place in their metro area, they'd have drawn much better over the years.

yes to all of that, bdc

Reds and Pirates basically followed the Orioles model which is unique to the era we currently live in. It's not really about having mass transit as it is about having cities be the entertainment center again after decades of everyone fleeing the cities for the suburbs.

And the Cobb Braves and The Battery is the new gold standard that teams strive for.

The potential variable that makes Vegas more attractive a market than the traditional population numbers is that an enormous number of people who don't live within 150 miles of the market are constantly visiting within a five-mile radius of the stadium, and are there specifically to attend conferences and go on vacations designed to do lots of stuff at night and on the weekends.

Yea, it's a matter of how sustainable this model is. Kaval said they're counting on 30 percent tourists. Can they get that when there is so much competition for tourist's attention in Vegas? Is that a sustainable way to build a fanbase is so many fans are rooting for your opponent?

And the bigger issue in my mind, is that when baseball's model is so dependent on the RSN (for now, we'll see if this changes), can you build a team off an RSN that has so few TV households? KC already has a small regional footprint, but it at least has a footprint. Vegas' RSN footprint will be cacti and roadrunners. How do you generate enough revenue?

can you build a team off an RSN

This seems irrelevant now.

I'll amend "transit" to "transport." In Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, like Baltimore and Cleveland, long-standing highway networks focus on downtown. In St. Petersburg they do so awkwardly and off-center to the larger metro area. In Anaheim and Arlington, major freeways pass through the cities without converging there, but carry a huge volume of traffic. The Las Vegas A's will have consider how they fit into that set of factors. (And I am going to resist looking at a map of Las Vegas and opining about it because as I said I know nothing :)

Will they extend the monorail to the stadium that goes by Mandalay Bay? You would get some hammered fans at the game. Probably add gambling panels to the seats too.

The park will be south of the city, by the airport, and T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium. All are adjacent to the 15. Freeways everywhere!

Vegas' RSN footprint will be cacti and roadrunners. How do you generate enough revenue?

Hire someone in marketing from Acme Products. They seem to have figured out that environment.

It seems the land they are setting aside for this is so huge they'll have some sort of casino or sportsbook involved at the site.

Steve Cohen is trying to do the retrofit version - he has his Mets stadium and plans to bid this year on a casino to open next door.

I don't like his chances, except that he has billions and NYC is a corrupt cesspool (hardly unique in that regard).

3 NYC-area casino licenses on the way, and the heavy favorites are Yonkers Raceway in Westchester County and Aqueduct in Queens. both already have thousands of slot machines, so they are "racinos." they could quickly revise their footprint to accommodate table games, so the city would get rich by far the quickest. any other site would generate only the license fee for several years.

a bunch of Manhattan proposals, Staten Island, Long Island, etc. Manhattanites would revolt against any elected official who supported the idea, so that's probably out. Staten Island doesn't have enough residents or tourists. Lawn Guyland makes the most sense.

that said, the minimum bid for a casino license in $500 million.
I can't picture a second casino in Queens - but what if Cohen offers $2 billion for a license?
he can afford it.

<bockquote>
Will they extend the monorail to the stadium that goes by Mandalay Bay? You would get some hammered fans at the game. Probably add gambling panels to the seats too.</blockquote>

A’s turn to Elon Musk for help with Vegas move

The A’s yet-to-come stadium will also feature one, perhaps two Hyperloop stops courtesy of Elon Musk’s company.

“We spoke to Steve Davis at The Boring Company,” Kaval said. “And yes, a stop is in our future. Maybe two.”

LOL the A's are buying transit vaporware

Relinquishing Idlewild also cuts deeply into current appreciation of the Car 54 Where are you them song:

There's a hold up in the Bronx, Brooklyn's broken out in fights
There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights
There's a scout troop short a child, Kruschev's due at Idlewild

Car 54 Where are You?


On another note, having been in the middle of India for 3 months in 1987, my firm then sent me to Phoenix for the period June-October. I always marveled at their ability to send me to a populated area that was actually hotter than where I had been.

I think Nashville is a FAR more attractive market,

Went to Nashville on vacation last year, while on my way up to Cambridge for 45th College Reunion. Loved Nashville. Honky Tonks open at 10:30, music, booze and food everywhere, while outside the tourist area, a large city is growing.

Too bad it's in Tennessee.

Vegas is on a major river. That's a huge deal. City-in-desert-next-to-perennial-river is one of the fundamental modes of human development, and highly sustainable. Cairo has been kicking around for like 7000 years and counting. Xi'an is barely semi-arid, there's been a city there for about 4000 years.

Cairo is quite literally on the banks of the Nile. Xi'an is quite literally on the banks of the Wei. Vegas is, what, 20-25 miles minimum from the Colorado? Are you talking about something other than the Colorado?

The river at the Venetian

My wife wanted to take me somewhere for a weekend (from Dallas) for my 50th birthday a few years ago and I decided I wanted to go to Kansas City, specifically to see the co-located Negro Leagues and American Jazz Museums. Got a great tip from here to see the cache of items salvaged from the sinking of the steamship Arabia too.

Kansas City is a fun place to visit for a baseball fan. Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is recommended, Kauffman Stadium is a gem, BBQ is terrific. I also recommend the Steamship Arabia museum. The World War I Museum is fantastic. The city is well worth a long weekend.