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For heavens sake........it is a college football field associated with a college that does not stress sports.
As for other cities, in fifteen years all those blue glass boxes that are being built are going to be just as cliche as all these underwhelming apt. complexes being built across america. Socialist buildings for a newly socialist country.
Some people are just easily swayed by sparkle. Give me brick and mortar anytime. Substance and continuity.
Don't get me wrong, I agree it's a great addition to the city, but 280Tony has a great point, if you're going to build something that is iconic, should serve the city and be in its skyline for 50+ years, you should do it to today's standards so it has a little more longevity. Birmingham is treating this as a statement piece, and the statement is just not very strong. All he's doing is wishing for a little more out of the city which is what more people should do to avoid ho-hum major projects.
I know this isn't the way to make friends around here, but he's right. However, it is what it is so lets enjoy it. But I doubt your friends from other cities are going to fly into town to see it.
Is it better than what we had? Yes. Could it have been a lot better? Hell yes.
So what does it all mean?
This was probably the best we could do at the time. Consider the fuss that was put up when Railroad Park gained traction. $22 million for an almost-20 acre, award winning park in the middle of a downtown core is a steal! And we barely crossed the hurdle? Why? As region, we hadn't tried anything that ambitious in a while. Then came the Barons stadium, then Protective. Successes lead to other, larger ones. And while sometimes a city and swing for the fences and hit the homerun (looking at you OKC), Birmingham seems to grow more incrementally. If we keep our foot on the gas, there's a good chance we'll hit a new level soon.
For heavens sake........it is a college football field associated with a college that does not stress sports.
As for other cities, in fifteen years all those blue glass boxes that are being built are going to be just as cliche as all these underwhelming apt. complexes being built across america. Socialist buildings for a newly socialist country.
Some people are just easily swayed by sparkle. Give me brick and mortar anytime. Substance and continuity.
UAB's football average attendance is just over 23,000. Protective is almost certainly on the upper end of CUSA teams, and those of other schools in minor (relative to Power 5) conferences.
Fears confirmed. Stadium couldn't look more underwhelming. It'll be a revenue success and with patrons (which is most important), but boy is it right in line, aesthetically, with every other large-scale development attempted in this state -- no care or concern for distinction. Go take a look at the architect's portfolio. Protective is among its most banal projects. Birmingham had a real opportunity here to make a significant visual impact on its skyline, to punctuate it with a truly elegant and imposing design. To signal a departure from the dated late 90s / early 2000s style which is so prevalent amongst downtown's more prominent structures.
But sadly, we are left with an unremarkable result. The two or so renderings before the final iteration were even more appealing. Why can't Birmingham's leadership dream bigger? Why must everything have a "this fits fine for the Alabama-tier" look? Would any of you seriously say this stadium would be heralded as an eye-popping aesthetic achievement in any major (top 25) U.S. metro? To be honest, I'm not so sure this would've been approved in any of our peer cities -- their recent large projects (complete or proposed) are far and away more modern than what we get (see new MSY airport, Devon Energy Tower, BOK Park Plaza, One Beale, Louisville Omni, several developments in Buffalo, etc.)
Am I the only one who is exhausted by the lack of vision in Birmingham? Am I the only one who is crazed at having to see this undiscovered jewel of a city, with it's wealth of unrealized potential, be chronically relegated these trite, hackneyed designs for EVERYTHING that gets built? Let's be honest: Ascend in Five Points or Vesta could easily be mistaken as having been built in 2007. As could Protective.
They talked so long about a domed convention center / stadium. The renderings were awesome. It would've been the most important project ever built in Birmingham. That changed to just an open-air stadium, which again had some decent initial proposed designs. Then it ultimately relegated to the version that got built out. With its diminished capacity, and passe brick siding to match Uptown's equally uninspiring, new-suburban strip mall chic. The exteriors of Protective and the shops at Lane Park in Mountain Brook are one in the same. How is no one else fed up with this?
The stadium's look is par for the course for states like AL, MS, and AR. It wouldn't have been OK'd in Nashville, or Atlanta, or Charlotte. Those places would demand so much more. But not us. We don't spend the extra money that is required to do it right / make it transformative, or have the proper people with a discerning eye for urban development approving these things. Birmingham desperately needs an injection of modernity in its developments. Desperately. I don't think any of us want it to become Nashville, but it damn sure needs to elevate its national and regional profile. For the sake of the state economy, and its own future. You don't achieve that by building out underwhelming (and what are, frankly, small potatoes) projects and then try to pass them off as game changers. The separation between us and our peers continues to widen. Hell, even Huntsville is more ambitious in their development designs these days. A downtown stadium isn't something you mail in. It's supposed to be a statement piece that alters the trajectory of a city's core. I have very little hope that Protective will achieve that.
I moved away from Bham in 2019 to take a job in Dallas. Now this isn't a fair comparison, I get it, but upon arrival my eyes were opened to how mega cities with their foot on the gas and a standard for new-build aesthetics works. They don't skimp, they don't delay. Anything that is less than sexy design-wise gets summarily rejected. You have to come proper or not at all. With occasion to go down to Austin frequently, my wourde, the projects in that city are a sight to behold. It's competitive art, the way they are designing their new builds. It's ALL about the aesthetics. Whereas in Birmingham, we settle for projects that ubiquitously share the tiresome, half-assed gentrification look. Protective is no different. I think developers know this as well, and are happy to put up as many Lakeview Green's as we'll allow, because they can cheap out on the schematics and call it a day. They aren't forced to actually come to the table with a competitive vision as they are in other metros. Drives me nuts that Birmingham now defaults to accepting that en masse. I understand there are dollars and cents behind it all, but my Lourde, would it kill this town to just knock one marquee project out of the park? To build something with a design that could play in NYC? Esp. with large public works.
I think Bham royally underdelivered on what it's downtown stadium could have been, but my rant notwithstanding, I do believe it will do fine in driving tax revenue. I just hate how boring it looks, and don't expect it to be some catalyst for bigger projects.
There's a lot to unpack here and maybe I will fully respond when I have more time. You make some reasonable points and nothing you are saying about our peer cities or cities some people aspire to be like are untrue...
But I think most of the criticism is at least partially unfair.
From the tone of your post, it almost seems like if you could only have one, you would pick the aesthetic lights under the downtown bridges as opposed to Protective Stadium.
As for why Vesta looks like it was built in 2007... well, Vesta was designed closer to 2007 than 2021.
With the landscape of college football dramatically changing, it could make Protective Stadium an absolutely terrible investment.
Regardless, for it to be a good investment for the city, it's going to need to be in use a lot more than 7 or 8 days a year imo.
That's true. Attendance at college football seems to have peaked a few years ago. Now, buying tickets, concessions, and hotel stays are pricing many families out of attending. Not to mention that virtually every game is on television, so you can sit in your living room, near the fridge, watch the game on your 70" hi def television, and have a clean bathroom steps away.
I don't know how that will affect Protective, but some schools are actually reducing capacity and going more for premium seating (club levels and the like).
Up until a couple years ago, my wife and I had season tickets, but a 400 mile roundtrip to Starkville just got to be a pain so we dropped them. A weekend would cost close to $1000 counting the seat fee, tickets, hotel, gas, parking, etc. I'm sure it's much more at Auburn and UAT.
Are there plans for some high school games to be played at Protective? Next year's World Games will help a lot, assuming Covid doesn't carry on that long or get worse.
As far as Protective being a terrible investment - hopefully it won't turn out like the San Antonio Aladome, which didn't attract a team and almost certainly cost the city a pile of cash.
That's true. Attendance at college football seems to have peaked a few years ago. Now, buying tickets, concessions, and hotel stays are pricing many families out of attending. Not to mention that virtually every game is on television, so you can sit in your living room, near the fridge, watch the game on your 70" hi def television, and have a clean bathroom steps away.
I don't know how that will affect Protective, but some schools are actually reducing capacity and going more for premium seating (club levels and the like).
Up until a couple years ago, my wife and I had season tickets, but a 400 mile roundtrip to Starkville just got to be a pain so we dropped them. A weekend would cost close to $1000 counting the seat fee, tickets, hotel, gas, parking, etc. I'm sure it's much more at Auburn and UAT.
Are there plans for some high school games to be played at Protective? Next year's World Games will help a lot, assuming Covid doesn't carry on that long or get worse.
As far as Protective being a terrible investment - hopefully it won't turn out like the San Antonio Aladome, which didn't attract a team and almost certainly cost the city a pile of cash.
What you said in the bolded section will be part of UAB's marketing strategy that could actually help UAB and Protective Stadium succeed. Live in Birmingham, but don't want to drop $1000 on a Saturday in Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Starkville, etc? How about $20-$25/ticket or as cheap as $75 for a season ticket to watch UAB? Have a fun outing with the family watching live sports, save a bunch of money, and only take up 3-4 hours of your time instead of the whole day.
Protective Stadium should make UAB games more similar to Baron's games. Fairly cheap entertainment that anybody in Birmingham can get behind at a cool new venue. Then of course from UAB's perspective you hope to convert a certain % of those kind of people into more regular fans.
280Tony, is your thesis that a better stadium could/should have been designed/built with the allotted $174 million or that the project should have cost more than $174 million in order to get a better/bolder design?
i definitely agree that the stadium is underwhelming, but i am still glad to have it.
Honestly man, it's both. And firstly, I shall say that like you all, I'm glad that something was built as opposed to nothing. I say it again -- the stadium will be successful. But the finished product is far beneath what it could have and should have been. And conversely, its maximum yield will never be as high as it could and should have been. It's going to always achieve ends that meet the city's, state's, and financers' expectations, but I anticipate it will do nothing for us in terms of elevating our national profile or attracting the kind of events / ancillary development that would actually propel our beautiful and long-maligned city as a hotbed for growth. I must ask, at this point, would building out phase 2 of Uptown and putting in a tenet like Walk Ons blow anyone's hair back?
I think the decision makers could've gotten a much, much better final design than what they did. And of course, I think they should've bonded this thing out the ass and paid whatever it took (while interest rates were favorable) to guarantee that the stadium was going to be world-class. The push for a downtown stadium has been debated for what, 20+ years, and when they finally commit to it, they give us a generic box with a big screen, that screams "I am a sterile municipal stadium, with no aesthetic nuance or touch whatsoever." With embarrassing seating capacity to boot. You ever seen ASU's recentish-new stadium in Montgomery? It is every bit as impressive as Protective, and at 1/3 the cost. I'm kinda struggling to see what the $175m went to, tbh.
Again, happy as hell to have it. I know it doesn't sound that way, but I truly am. But holy **** did they underdeliver here. You don't poke your chest out about this being a watershed development for downtown, that some world-class stadium is in the pipeline, and then spend that much money on something that looks like an undergrad engineering student designed on AutoCAD in their spare time. There isn't one unique or compelling element to Protective. Not one.
Google up Yulman Stadium on Tulane's campus, built 3-4 years ago. $75 mil. It's beautiful, smartly designed, and compliments its surroundings perfectly. It's quality seems vastly superior to what we got, and again at a fraction of the cost. Downtown deserved a world-class stadium. This city deserved a structure that would've garnered national attention and attracted top flight entertainment and sport. With what it turned out to be -- I would've rather them put a smaller, more compact and sharp design on UAB's campus, and pour the rest of the money into maximizing the BJCC reno (which, btw, is the real prize in all of this).
People talk about Bham's prospects of ever getting a pro team, or hosting xyz convention, or having am upper-tier college bowl game, or hosting marquee exhibition sporting matches, or being a regular stop for mega touring musicians. I don't know how we can expect any of that to manifest when our leadership assents to such stifling mediocrity. Our big projects are just so incredibly cheap looking when compared to things other major US metros are doing. What they should have done with all of this was raze the BJCC, and replace it with a sleek, indoor convention / sporting arena. In many ways, I don't consider Protective to be a worthy heir to Legion Field, in terms of stature.
It should have resembled something like the Legacy Arena renovation. The best thing the city can do now has nothing to do with the stadium, but to start forcing developers to build vertically. The apartments being built are lame…boring. When I visit, I prefer to see more vision.
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