The other day, I was jonesing for a good hamburger, and a burger chain of my youth has just recently opened a few near Boston. The nearest one is down in Foxborough, so off I went. Sports fans will recognize Foxborough as the site of Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots.
It’s about 20 miles south of Boston and only about 8 years old. I’ve driven by there before, even went to a soccer game a few years ago, but I haven’t been there for a few years.
It has changed a bit; they’ve built a big-ass shopping mall in the parking lot. (Well, I’ve seen bigger malls, but this one’s big enough.) There’s a Showcase De Lux cinema, and even a medical center. I can’t quite decide if this is brilliant or stupid. The brilliant part is that there’s great freeway access, and a huge parking lot that’s only used about a dozen times a year. The stupid part is that on those dozen days, I’d think you’d need every square foot you could get. How are Patriots fans going to feel when it’s December in New England and they have to park out in West Bumfuck and trudge with their cooler and seat cushion past a Sprint Store and Bath and Body Works?
Maybe there’s method in their madness. The mall seems to have more than the usual number of restaurants. Maybe the idea is give the fans a place to cool their heels after the game while they wait for traffic to thin out. (Stadium capacity is 68,000+, hard to believe the restaurants could even make a dent in that.) One of the eateries is CBS Scene, apparently it’s a CBS themed restaurant. (No, I don’t know what that means, either.)
Here’s a google map satellite image of the area, and a link to the mall’s own site.
So, what do you think; is this the wave of the future for suburban, multi-use, mega-development, or will it be boarded up within five years?
It’s quite common now. I think many new stadiums are built with malls in mind. I think it’s a great idea, actually. I worked in restaurant for several years, and regardless of how busy you are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you have to have customers Monday through Thursday to survive.
For big sporting events out here, and in a number of other places I’m familiar with, the wave has been to park in various large lots in the metro and take shuttles to the game. Is that the parking strategy the Patriots are pursuing?
Not only for people to cool their heels after the game, but also for pregame parties and relaxation. It’s not a bad idea, and I see it as akin to malls building up around movie theaters.
Of course, you talk about trudging in with your coolers, and that’s exactly what they don’t want you to do. They want you to go in empty-handed and buy their drinks and food.
Which other stadia have been built this way? I thought the recent trend was to build closer to the city centers; Camden Yards in Baltimore, Progressive Field in Cleveland (looks pretty close to downtown), Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, etc. The only new one I can think of that looks to be out in the boonies is Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
It still seems to me that if you’ve got a place that can handle the crowds on game day, you’re going to have acres of empty tables the rest of the week. If you can’t handle the crowds, why build in such an out-of-the-way location?
I’ve never been near Gillette Stadium when it’s been really full, but there are signs at some of the nearby businesses advertising game day parking rates, and some of those seem a little far to walk, so a shuttle of some kind wouldn’t surprise me. On the other hand, the mall must take up the space of a few hundred parking spaces, which would be within walking distance; which means more busses and more expense to run them.
I’m not sure if coolers are even allowed. The few big sports events I’ve been to have always been a huge hassle[sup]*[/sup]; parking, walking across acres of parking lots, etc.
But the worst part is always trying to leave. You’ve been in your car for an hour, haven’t you, lined up with everybody trying to get out at the same time? It seems like dropping a shopping mall into prime real estate can only make that worse.
Now that I’ve been there once, I can’t think of anything there that people in Boston of Providence couldn’t get a lot closer to home. The area around Foxborough isn’t complete devoid of human life, of course, so maybe they’re trying to cater to the locals as well.
It’s different at stadiums in a city, where most folks can use transit instead of driving and parking; but there’s still always a mob of people trying to get on the available trains and busses.
The general area around Foxboro stadium was a really odd place for a long time before they started to develop the area. They basically plopped a giant stadium for a top-notch NFL team in the middle of cow pastures with very little infrastructure to support it and it stayed that way for years. Foxboro was practically the boonies until recently. I used to drive straight by it every day on Route 1 North and still live not that far away. Did you ever see the scattered circa 1950 no tell/motels every couple of miles down the road? I stayed in one once and it was a dank and run-down as you can find. That is odd for a stadium area.
It was odd that it existed like that in the first place and it isn’t typical for a stadium location. I have no idea how the current business model will work but at least there are things besides a huge stadium with scattered dirt parking lots alongside the road there now. I like going there but it has to be a destination location because Foxboro is still a bit off the beaten path. I guess they expect the area to grow around it in a pre-fab style.
I dunno. The hotel’s web site mentions that it has weekend packages, which generally means that it’s a “business” hotel, and reasonably full during the week. On the other hand, the hotel doesn’t list anything nearby (the guides are for Boston, Providence, Woonsocket and Framingham), and it doesn’t provide airport shuttles to either Boston or Providence, so why the hell would someone stay there on business?
And the complex is miles away from the nearest Interstates, which is not the current model for successful big-ass shopping malls.
They started up a massive shopping/entertainment/recreation project (Xanadu :rolleyes:) complete with a ski slope in the Meadowlands in NJ by the Izod Center and Giants Stadium. It went up, got stalled, and I think they have some funding again. Changed the name, too. Ugly motherf***er.
Did anyone see the article in the New York Times the other day about the claim that America overbuilds parking lots? (I’ll take ‘Duh!’ for one thousand, Alex.)
I did a quick poll of some local friends and many of them have made the trip (maybe 25 minutes from where I live) to Patriot Place for a dinner/drinks/evening kind of thing. I think they’re less likely to do so now that we have Legacy Place near us.
My other post was incomplete. When I was commenting about the deluxe cinema, I was going to say that I really, really don’t need waiter service when I’m watching a movie. That just seems odd to me.
Red Robin; I hadn’t been to one in years, and most of the local burger joints have been a tiny bit disappointing.
And I just kinda felt like getting out and about, somewhere. It inspired this thread, and I passed by a Mexican restaurant on the way that I tried the next night, and it was rather good.
I guess that sums up the questions I’m trying ask here. Are they hoping this mall will be a success on its own terms, with game day visitors pushing them farther into the black, or are they expecting football fans to pick up some soap and candles while they’re in the neighborhood, and everything else is just gravy? Is this supposed to be a destination for Boston and Providence residents, or did they figure the local residents were underserved?
It’s only a few miles from I-95, though, and it’s good traffic flow (on non-game days) with only a few stoplights. Not much drive-by traffic, in terms of advertising and awareness, though. If your shopping mall is right next to the interstate, everybody who takes the freeway knows it’s there, even if they don’t stop on that particular day. Maybe Patriot Place is hoping for word of mouth among football fans.
I didn’t know about Legacy Place, either, until I drove past it that night. I was thinking of seeing a movie, and wanted to see what was playing at the cinema on that corner. No more cinema. Didn’t know what it was called until I saw your post and looked it up; “oh, that looks familiar.” Maybe I’ll go bowling.
Westgate has a mall, the arena for the Phoenix Coyotes, and right next door is the Arizona Cardinals stadium.
Not really sure it works, though. Westgate is in the far western area of Phoenix, a city known for huge sprawl. In general, the more affluent areas are in the eastern section of the Phoenix area. Putting the hockey team there was a major mistake and the team struggles with attendance.
There’s a Red Robin in Plymouth now too! I worked down in the industrial park there and it was awesome for lunch. Is that a quicker drive for you than Foxboro?
