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Then she called Bob Garner. He was working at the Palladium Ballroom, at 3145 Southmore Blvd. tonight. It was Don Robey’s club, and the leading R&B and Soul Club in Houston. She told Bob about my arrival, and she also promised me free discs.

We, the taxpayers, own a parking lot. A sucky one. Lot C pass holders are almost completely made up of corporate season ticket holders who give tickets away to clients or employees along with a Lot C pass. Thos people who are smart ditch the pass and pay $5 and walk or $15 for convenience. The tightwads and the ones who dont know what they are getting into in Lot C park there and wait for an hour to get out of the lot after the game, probably while cursing to themselves. Our options are simple, 1) Lease the land for this abomination of a parking lot to AEG for a soccer stadium that they will pay for or 2) Continue leasing it to the Astros for a parking lot that essentially adds no value to us. Easy choice IMO.

Let's assume it happens. How does this affect East Downtown and the Near East End. You would begin encroaching upon 150-175 sports dates in that area per year (MLS, MLB, NBA, high school football, college basketball, college baseball). Youve got a convention center and hotel. A new park. Concerts that go with the 3 sports venues. Is it enough for entrepeneurs in the city to look at that area and say...this is the perfect area for a restaurant or casual/sports bar. Seems like this area of town would be perfect for a casual entertainment and dining district to develop.

The Dynamo average about 16k at Robertson. Max of about 25k. (A 70k doubleheader game at Reliant skews the "official" numbers a bit). The games are usually Saturday or Sunday evenings/nights. Some games on weeknights (which have caused problems with UH), and an occasional weekend day game.

Won't be long now before the anti-stadium crowd grabs their pitchforks and starts taking to the streets. Probably before any kind of funding issues are publicized.

German stadiums of the 20-30,000 capacity are generally single bank of stands around each side of the field. Most generally include terraces with standing room and seating and generally the terrace areas can be converted to seating. German stadiums also almost always have a roof covering the stands but not the field. Examples

I suspect that all you would get at that location is a fabulous view of US 59 towering over the west end of the stadium.

Makes sense. It was very hard for me to pick out a spot where an E/W street was crossing through in the unedited rendering.

Ummm...doesnt W Dallas St runs right through the middle of Allen House E/W?

Bradenton is the US Men's National Team academy for the USA youth teams. Also, each team now has its own academy where they train youth players per a directive from the league. Houston has signed 5 players or so in the last couple of weeks to start their academy. Each team will be allowed to keep a certain number of their own home grown players from now on without exposing them to the SuperDraft. Before that rule was in place, it wasnt worth it to have academies since domestic players had to go through the draft. You would invest in a bunch of players and any team could reap the benefits by taking him from you before you got anything out of him.

There is already a Club World Cup. It includes the 6 champions of the regional confederations. The Dynamo would qualify by winning the 2007 CONCACAF Champions Cup. Club America (Mexico) represented North America/Carribean and Internacional (Brazil) won the championship over Barcelona (Spain). Hopefully they will find time and interest at some point to expand the field and get a World Cup style 32 team big tournament at some point though.

The Dynamo will play for 4 trophies this year. MLS Cup, US Open Cup, CONCACAF Champions Cup (the real North American and Caribean Club championship, similar to the UEFA CUP or Champions league unlike the Mexico-US setup in Superliga), and the aforementioned Superliga.

Following the FC Dallas model for the Houston Dynamo will be the death knell for a squad with a pretty promising future here. At least in Dallas ALL of the suburbs are on the North side of town. You can build a successfule suburban soccer club there. They try that here they will be lucky to have 5000 fans in there for a game in years where the team does not win. The school district would probably draw more fans for high school football. The "Frisco" model works in Dallas because all of DFW's suburban areas are concentrated on the north side of the metroplex. The people who are furthest from Frisco are actually just south of downtown Dallas and in Fort Worth. Downtown to Frisco is 30 miles. Fort Worth probably has very few fans who make the trip because its 50 miles, but again almost all of Forth Worths suburbs are on the northeast side of Forth Worth and are closer to Frisco (Southlake, Grapevine, Flower Mound, etc). In Houston, you have Sugarland/Missouri City/etc, Katy, The Woodlands/Conroe, Clear Lake/League City, the Cypress-Fairbanks area, Humble/Kingwood, and the Pearland/Friendswood areas and ALL are located on different radial directions from downtown Houston. If you build in downtown, that means you are building the stadium in 1)the city with the largest number of fans. and 2) the only location within 30 miles of all of the following...Cy-Fair, Katy, The Woodlands, League City, Pearland, Sugarland, Tomball, Humble, Spring, Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc, etc, etc. If you build in Katy...Houston is now 30 miles away instead of smaller Katy only being 30 miles away. Pearland is 45 miles away. League City is 60 miles away. The Woodlands is 50 miles away. The same works for any suburban type location, your'e cutting your suburban fan base in half by excluding the suburbs on the far side of town, while also placing your urban fans at a longer distance. And unlike suburban fans who are used to driving into town for entertainment venues, I doubt urban fans are going to make the reverse commute when they have other options in town. Downtown makes sense. You can probably have a base of 15,000 fans within 10 miles of the stadium in downtown Houston while still pulling a few thousand from the 30 mile range in all directions. You build somewhere like Cypress (to use an example, you could also sub in Pearland, Sugarland, etc her and change up the example a bit and it would be the same), and you'll probably find only 5000 or fewer fans within 10 miles, a handful from Katy, Woodlands and Sugarland, and you'll probably drop the Houston fans who hardly ever drive out to the burbs down significantly. Plus youve all but killed all the suburban fans on the southwest side...they arent likely going to be making a hour and half trek across the Houston Metro area on a regular basis. If you build somewhere like Sealy (that cant be a real option) you can kiss this team goodbye, they'll be folding up shop within 5 years. Dallas is different. We cant use their model.

When life gives Hizzy threads, he strangles whoever makes him mad...