Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Soccernomics: PGE Park Plans Released

The renovation plans for PGE Park have been released and it looks pretty darn great as a venue for soccer. Sadly, my worst fears have been realized and they will be playing on plastic. This means I will only be an occasional ticket buyer rather than a season ticket holder. I understand that the use of the stadium by PSU and high school football is a constraint, but high school football really has no business in the stadium (surely it is far too expensive to use it for this purpose?) and occasional high school football and the regular PSU football schedule can be accommodated as they are in other grass MLS stadiums. Hopefully in a few more years cooler heads will prevail.

But so it goes. I am still very happy that the stadium will have a new and exciting life as a venue for MLS and that the city will have a top flight professional team in soccer to cheer for.

NB: Since it is now a best-selling book, I shall ride the 'soccernomics' bandwagon!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The stadium is going to be great. Money was a factor in going with turf rather than grass. Grass is more costly to maintain, plus drainage and light issues. They had a tight budget which I think they are going to use well, and Paulson did say this was Phase I of renovations, so we could see grass in the future. He did say that they would be in grass for special events.