Tag Archives: Berlin

What would a successful urban NFL stadium look like in DC?

I had started jotting down notes about a new stadium at RFK back in 2015 when Events DC hosted a series of planning meetings about the topic. Parts of this post have been sitting in my drafts folder since then.

And since 2015, a lot has changed. The local NFL team is now on its third name, and Virginia seems set on throwing money at the team to build a new stadium somewhere in the hinterlands of Loudoun or Prince William counties.

Legislators seem entranced by the idea of building a new city around the stadium, with a dome to host events year-round – Super Bowls, Final Fours, etc. Such promises of large-scale events are almost required in order to justify the multi-billion dollar price tag. Spending that much for a facility that only hosts a dozen events a year seems hardly worth it.

However, the only suitable parcels for such a large footprint are further and further from the center of the region. One of the potential locations (near the Jiffy Lube Live amphitheater) is so far from the core of DC that Baltimore’s NFL stadium is both closer and easier to access for a huge portion of the City. How attractive will a stadium that’s 30 miles from the city (and the bars and hotels and hospitality) be to a host committee picking venues for the Final Four or a Super Bowl?

Back in the District, Mayor Bowser expressed support for bringing the team back to RFK, but there doesn’t seem to be any appetite on the Council for matching Virginia’s offer.

And yet, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

There are lots of reasons to oppose any deal with the current team and owner. The team is bad and poorly run; the owner is (by all accounts) an awful person and unlikely to be a good partner in any city-building exercise; the financial incentives for NFL teams in general are extractive and lack strong ties to the community. All of this was true in 2015 and remains so today.

Then there are the externalities: stadium opponents will often cite large parking lots hosting tailgate parties as if those are requirements for building. Yet they do not need to be. And if we think beyond the narrow NFL vision for what a stadium should be, there are all sorts of opportunities.

It’s worth thinking through what it would take to get to ‘yes’ on a new football stadium in DC. Assume we had a different owner; one willing to fund a stadium privately. RFK has hosted sporting events since 1961; the site has lots of advantages. What would I need to see to get to ‘yes’ on a new stadium at RFK?

  • Minimal parking; no surface parking – Plan for fans to arrive via transit, potentially including infill Metro stations.
  • A civic center built to host multiple events
  • Connected to dense, urban development on the City side
  • Integrated into parkland on the river side

It’s not too hard to envision an urban stadium and waterfront park, both as a vision for the future of the RFK site and as a reference to past plans.

Planning Precedent

Before the District broke ground on D.C. Stadium in 1960, planners identified the need for a stadium in Washington to host large events, and at the intersection of East Capitol Street with the Anacostia River as early as the 1930s – often with the eye on hosting the Olympic Games.

1941 NCPC Plan for an East Capitol Mall.
1941 NCPC Plan for an East Capitol Mall.

A series of plans in the 1920s and 30s involved a massive expansion of DC’s monumental spaces. Very little of the plan was implemented, but one common element included a stadium and other athletic facilities (including a tennis arena, natatorium, and ballfields, with an eye toward hosting an Olympic Games) where East Capitol Street meets the Anacostia River.

east cap mall crop stadium
Cropped image of the 1941 plan; includes #71 stadium, #72 sport field, #73 natatorium, and #74 tennis stadium as well as a railroad station at the bottom of the image.

This version of the plan includes a new stadium located opposite of the existing DC Armory, as well as a large ‘sports field’ built into the hillside. The plan contains many similar elements to Berlin’s olympic park, including the massive Maifield located next to the Olympiastadion.

Aerial view of Berlin's Olympiastadion, along with the Maifield. Image from Bing Maps.
Aerial view of Berlin’s Olympiastadion, along with the Maifield. Image from Bing Maps.

The stadium was built for the 1936 Olympic Games in a park to the west of Berlin’s center city. The Maifield was built for holding annual May Day celebrations, as well as hosting large events. After World War II, the Maifield was the base of operations for the British soldiers occupying their sector of West Berlin.

Following reunification, there was a long debate in Berlin about what to do with the stadium built by the Nazis. Some favored demolishing it and replacing it with a new stadium, others argued it should be left to crumble as a ruin. The end result was a renovation, completed in 2004 in anticipation of hosting the 2006 World Cup.

The renovation includes an underground parking garage directly linked to the VIP seating areas via a large below-grade atrium. The renovation managed to add premium seating areas while completely preserving the exterior. There are a modest number of surface parking areas, but they are either well landscaped or paved in a manner that allows for other uses. Nearby transit lines include both the U2 U-Bahn line as well as the S5 S-Bahn, complete with a large multi-platform station to accomodate big crowds.

  • Built: 1936
  • Renovated: 2004
  • Capacity: 74,475
  • On-site parking: 815 spaces

The stadium isn’t without its challenges. The main tenant is Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, which wants to build a dedicated soccer stadium (without the running track) and a smaller total capacity.

Events DC’s master plan for RFK abides by the terms of the lease on the land for ‘recreational purposes,’ and actually ends up with a vision for a waterfront park (with or without a stadium) and various sports and recreation venues not dissimilar from the Olympic Park ambition.

RFK Stadium and the challenge of multi-use venues

As mentioned above, the dilemma for any modern NFL stadium is the relative paucity of events compared to the cost of the edifice. Building a multi-use facility is the obvious solution, but the history of such venues in the US is murky. RFK is the original concrete donut, built to host football and baseball – admirably adaptable, a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of design.

These multi-purpose stadiums were once common; now almost all have been demolished – usually requiring separate baseball and football venues as replacements.

At some level, a stadium is a stadium. The basic design parameters for a football field haven’t changed that much over the decades. There are plenty of college football stadiums approaching (if not exceeding) a century of service. They’ve been renovated and added to over the years, upgraded to meet modern standards and the increasing professionalization of college football. Yet the institutional context means teams won’t ever move to a different city in order to get a better deal. Similarly, it’s not an accident that the NFL’s longest tenured team in a single stadium (albeit one substantially altered over the years) is the league’s only community-owned franchise – the Green Bay Packers.

The modern challenge is building a stadium capable of hosting more events than just NFL gamedays in order to justify its own existence, yet doing so without draining the public coffers.

The latest set of domed NFL stadiums (SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis) all make use of ETFE roofing to provide an indoor venue that doesn’t ‘feel’ indoors – and arguably feels more open than the previous generation of retractable roof designs (in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Indianapolis). But for all of them, the roof is a critical element to enable additional events that justify the stadium’s existence and expense.

However, successfully hosting those kinds of events also relies on a central location in the region. Many of the domed NFL stadia are ‘downtown’ or immediately adjacent. Others are centrally located within the region. Only Phoenix is truly on the fringe (yet still just 12 miles from downtown as the crow flies).

As part of a regional plan, it’s much easier to justify that level of investment and land use intensity at a place like RFK than it is in Gainesville (31 miles from the Capitol Dome) or Ashburn (25 miles). If it were just a football stadium, hosting a dozen events a year, surrounded by surface parking lots, then a location on the fringe is preferable.

It’s a shame that the institutional context doesn’t allow for the kind of long-standing reinvestment and evolution, building off of the planning history for the RFK site. It’s also a shame that there’s not an obvious partnership between the primary user of a stadium and both the surrounding grounds as well as the neighboring community. But that’s not the world we have.

But it can be fun to dream.

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: part 2 – best practices of integrating viaducts into urban designs

Continued from the prologue and part 1… A look at legacy examples of older elevated construction precedents. Some examples drawn from this post and this thread on the archBoston forums.

Berlin: As a part of his writing about elevated rail, Jarrett Walker takes note of Berlin’s elevated rail, and the use of space beneath them:

But the Stadtbahn is something else.  Completed in 1882, it runs east-west right through the middle of the city, with all kinds of urban land uses right next to it.  It’s a major visual presence in many of Berlin’s iconic sites, from affluent Charlottenberg to the Frederichstrasse shopping core to the “downtown of East Berlin,” Alexanderplatz.  It even skirts Berlin’s great central park, the Tiergarten, and looks down into the zoo.  If you were proposing to build it today, virtually every urbanist I’ve ever met would instinctively hate the idea, and if the idea somehow got past them, the NIMBYs would devour it.

…

Yet much of it is beautiful. Most of the viaduct is built as a series of brick arches.  Each arch is large enough to contain rooms, and today many of these are retail space, most commonly restaurants.  These restaurants put their tables outside, sometimes facing a park but still, unavoidably, right next to the viaduct, and they’re very pleasant places to be.  A train clatters overhead every minute or two, but it’s not dramatically louder than the other sounds of urban life, so it’s a comfortable part of the urban experience, devoid of menace.  I could sit in such a place for hours.

Indeed, the  four-track Stadtbahn cuts through Berlin on its own right of way, not in adjacent to or in the median of another street. Many streets run tangent to the elevated railway for segments, but much of the city directly abuts the railway.

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial image from Bing Maps.

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial image from Bing Maps.

By cutting through the city on a separate level and without directly mirroring the street grid, the transit network adds another layer to the cityscape. The city, both old and new (and yet to be built), has grown around the elevated rail:

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial from Bing Maps.

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial from Bing Maps.

At the street, many of the viaduct’s archways have been turned over to retail uses, activating what would otherwise be a barrier of dead space:

View of the same viaduct from street level. Image from Google Streetview.

View of the same viaduct from street level. Image from Google Streetview.

Jarrett’s post features a number of other images from Berlin, showing the various types of spaces the Stadtbahn creates. He closes asking if we might learn from these legacy examples in building new transit infrastructure:

Europe has some really beautiful transit viaducts, including some in the dense centres of cities.  Most of them are a century old, so the city has partly grown around them.  But the effect is sometimes so successful that I wonder if we shouldn’t be looking more closely at them, asking why they work, and whether they still have something to teach us about how to build great transit infrastructure.

Paris: Metro Line 6:

Paris Metro Line 6. Image from Google Streetview.

Paris Metro Line 6. Image from Google Streetview.

Line 6 runs down the middle of several wide streets, providing enough room for bike and pedestrian pathways beneath the viaduct, while also leaving enough space alongside for trees and landscaping. The aesthetic elements of the rail infrastructure (stone piers, steel spans) echo the architecture of the city as a whole.

Paris also has examples of old, now un-used vaiducts re-purposed as part of a vibrant cityscape:

Paris 2

Viaduc des Arts, Paris. Image from Google Streetview.

Above the viaduct is now an elevated linear park.

New York: In the comments of Part 1, Charlie asked about New York’s High Line. I did not initially include it, but I do think it offers an intersting example. The High Line (or what remains of it), like Berlin’s Stadtbahn, does not run directly above many streets. Also, the city grew around the infrastructure – in the High Line’s case of delivering freight to adjacent factories, that direct interaction was the very point of building the line.

Aerial view of the High Line weaving between and through buildings. Image from Google Maps.

Aerial view of the High Line weaving between and through buildings. Image from Google Maps.

Southern end ot the High Line, running adjacent to Washington St. Image from Google Streetview.

Southern end ot the High Line, running adjacent to Washington St. Image from Google Streetview.

One particular example of elevated rail in New York both looks to the past (we don’t build ’em like we used to) but could also learn from the repurposing of the spaces created under viaducts for uses other than storage. The Queens Boulevard elevated rail line runs down the middle of a wide street, with large archways beneath the tracks – currently used for parking.

New York - Queens Blvd 1

Queens Boulevard elevated rail. Image from Google Streetview.

Consider that when the line was built, the surrounding area was completely undeveloped. The city (and the roadway) emerged around the rail line, rather than cutting the rail line through an existing urban evironment (I don’t know that any single image better conveys the links between transportation, land use, and development). Meshing transit expansion into low-density areas is not just about transportation, but about re-shaping the city. Under the right conditions, it can work well.

New York has other examples of repurposing space beneath viaducts. While not specifically a transit example, the re-use of space under the Queensboro Bridge approaches in Manhattan is an example of what’s possible with some of these rail viaducts:

Queensboro bridge approach, New York. Image from Google Streetview.

Queensboro bridge approach, New York. Image from Google Streetview.

Short of re-purposing the space beneath the tracks, the Queens Boulevard elevated rail allows for a perfectly acceptable kind of rail, without shadowing the streets or sidewalks below, making use of the street’s wide right of way. Alon Levy takes note:

But when there is an el about Queens Boulevard, everything works out: the street is broken into two narrower halves, with the el acting as a street wall and helping produce human scale; the el is also farther from the buildings and uses an arched concrete structure, both of which mitigate its impact.

Any other examples of older elevated infrastructure we can learn from?

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