Save Husky Stadium: A Rebuttal
SunBreak editor Michael van Baker makes the point that, from a city planning perspective, having two 60,000-seat football stadiums six miles away is bad. And he is right. From a city planning perspective.
But the University of Washington is not, and should not be concerned with, city planning. Not primarily, anyway. For something as important as the largest public gathering space on the campus, and the most attractive location for such a space on maybe any campus in the world, the needs of Seattle’s citizens should be a poor second to what’s best for UW.
Does The Sorbonne worry about Paris city planning? Does the University of Oxford worry about Oxford’s planning? I don’t know, I’ve never been there. Who do I look like, Rick Steves? I have been to New Haven, CT, and Philadelphia, PA, and and Harlem, NY, and I can tell you that Yale, Penn, and Columbia do not give a crap about the slummy neighborhoods in which they reside. This perhaps is not good citizenship, but it hasn’t hurt those universities much.
Being a fourth-generation Seattleite, I obviously don’t want my city to turn into West Philadelphia. But I think we can manage on our own. Let the university have (and pay for) their football stadium, let us have ours, and let us both march boldly and partially independently toward the 22nd century and beyond.
3 thoughts on “Save Husky Stadium: A Rebuttal”
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Big deal, the Huskies haven’t been worth a damn for 15 years now, ever since they got caught cheating giving cars to players. Ask the question when there’s a winning team and I might actually care.
Not that I have a horse in this race, but as a Penn alum, I have to mention the efforts that the university has made to improve its neighborhood of University City and West Philadelphia. As the city’s largest private employer, the university has become a model to other urban universities for being a “good citizen.” Google “Penn” and “Center for Community Partnerships” or check out the website for the Penn Institute for Urban Research.
Seeing how the Husky students are going to get booted out of their prime seating section and moved to the end zone, plus see the ticket prices and their tuition go throught the roof, I am not sure this proposal is not another grab for the money grubbing UW sport regents to make a few more dollars at the expense of the students. Given that you can’t tailgate anymore in the parking lots or any area nearby and have to imbibe in alcohol off campus at local overcrowded restaurants/bars I will just stay away.