<p>Here's the article:</p>
<p>If all goes well, it should be open for the beginning of the football season two years from now!</p>
<p>what did they resolve re: parking?</p>
<p>According to the article, they haven’t yet… Who knows what they’ll do, parking is hell in New Orleans!</p>
<p>Actually I have been following this fairly closely. They have just completed the third of three open meetings with all interested parties, mainly the people that live in the area. All aspects of the proposed stadium have been discussed, including parking (they will be offering shuttle service from remote lots besides whatever local parking there is), lighting, wall heights, what kind of events will be held there and how often, and much more. It is because of these meetings, and more to come, that Councilwoman Guidry withdrew her proposed IZD ordinance. Well, that and the fact that it didn’t have the votes. But I think Tulane has done a very good job of listening to all concerns, making some changes based on those concerns, and committing to keep people involved as things progress.</p>
<p>When the city council first passed this, they had the votes to override the mayor’s promised veto. But then the mayor appointed an additional new member, so then they didn’t. But the meetings were a nice touch! </p>
<p>Tulane seems to be trying to deal reasonably with the neighborhood concerns, which they should. But come on. The campus previously had a huge stadium that was used for Tulane, plus an NFL franchise, plus the annual Sugar Bowl plus an occasional Super Bowl.</p>
<p>Anyone who pays attention knows this stadium is a disaster in the making. Why won’t Cowen retire?</p>
<p>Back when you attended they had a stadium ( and a devcent football team, I believe). There is a benefit to having a stadium on campus. Hope the team improves as well with the new coach.</p>
<p>northwesty - Actually as I understand it they did not have an override, even without the new appointment. In talking to people there, the IZD passed 4-2 (and when I say passed I mean they voted to direct the City Planning Commission to conduct a hearing to consider establishment of an Interim Zoning District (IZD), not actually passing the IZD to go to the mayor for signature or veto), but it takes 5 votes to override a veto. Also, one member that voted for moving it to the committee for review wasn’t for sure on board for sending it to the mayor. Also, Tulane had a lawsuit pending, although that was more because if they didn’t file within a fairly short time they lost all rights to file ever.</p>
<p>There are people, like yeatsfan, that are strongly opposed to the new stadium, and many that are strongly for it. But I am not sure how one can be so sure it is a “disaster in the making”. It will have many uses besides 6 Tulane home games a year. Time will tell. Obviously a winning team would make a huge difference, and should that happen one will never be able to say for sure how much was due to being able to recruit better due to the new stadium. Before people say “but how can it be any better for recruiting than playing in the Superdome?”, many former players (including Matt Forte who has come out in favor of the on campus stadium) say that for a school the size of Tulane it is much better to have a nice facility on campus. For LSU, the Superdome would make sense. For Tulane, even if they were a much better team, not so much.</p>
<p>FC – I may be missing some of the inside baseball on how the Nola city council works. But it seems like the outcome on the stadium was pretty uncertain. </p>
<p>There was a council election in April that was won by one of the folks who voted against the stadium. That opened up a city council vacancy that the council had the right to fill. Only after the council was prevented from filling the seat (by members walking out to defeat a quorum) did the mayor get the right to fill the seat. </p>
<p>The vote was 4-2 against the stadium with one council seat vacant. So the vote of the new appointee would be decisive.</p>
<p>northwesty - I certainly agree that in politics any outcome can be uncertain, no doubt you are right on that. That is why Tulane went ahead and filed the suit. But since the mayor was against it, I would think he would have gotten a promise from whomever he had fill the seat that they would vote his way. And, as I said, one member was far from certain to vote to pass it. Voting to have it studied and voting to pass it are two very different things. But this being New Orleans, who knows.</p>
<p>Anyway, moot point now. But fun to speculate.</p>
<p>FC – at the exact same May meeting when the 4-2 vote on the stadium was taken, the city council majority was also trying to fill the vacant seat (which it had the right to do at that point). The council minority (who voted for the stadium) prevented that from happening by walking out and thus defeating a quorum. The mayor only got the right to fill the seat in June after the council’s time to fill the seat ran out. That sounds pretty “up in the air” to me! </p>
<p>Other than the nimby-ism of the neighborhood, what’s the argument against the stadium?</p>
<p>Well, from the neighbors themselves, that’s pretty much it. Although I should quickly point out that many from the neighborhood are for the stadium, so it is a really mixed bag.</p>
<p>From students, alumni and a few others that have interest for whatever reason, the ones that are against it seem mostly to think there should just be other priorities. In a way, I agree that if the money were able to be used for any purpose whatsoever, this wouldn’t be my first choice. But the money was donated specifically for this purpose. No doubt some of the people that donated would have given something anyway, but from what I understand the vast majority of this money was given only because of the promise of a new stadium. That being the case, then I certainly agree that a 30,000 seat stadium on campus is better than playing at the Dome. Heck, even though it sat more people (and so looked even emptier when attendance was low), I still liked playing in Tulane Stadium way more than the Superdome. And I had exactly 2 years of each.</p>
<p>My main concern is that we are building this at exactly the time the sport itself is under so much fire because of the head trauma involved. Certainly, given the extreme popularity of the sport, we may look back 10, 20, even 30 years from now and wonder how we could think the sport could possibly go away. On the other hand, there will be big money lawsuits, and now that the dangers are known to everyone…Hard to justify putting college athletes at that level of risk when they aren’t even getting paid. And besides and because of all that, big time college football is so corrupt, it is possibly in even more danger than pro football.</p>
<p>Who knows, probably these concerns will all come to naught and football in some form very similar to how we know it today will continue on. If so, and if Tulane starts fielding better teams, the stadium will look like a master move.</p>