More from the Stadium Study

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to flip through the entire 55-page Inner Belt Brickbottom Scoping Study, allow me to point out a couple of interesting highlights:

• If you’re unfamiliar with the general location, the study points out that the majority of major buildings in Downtown Boston is within a two mile radius.  Harvard Square is within two miles, and MIT is a little more than a mile away as the crow flies.  I would say it’s in a similar location to BMO Field in Toronto.

• I don’t want to cast aspersions on the professionalism of the study as clearly a lot of time went into it, but it’s a little disheartening when you see terms like “Lunchpin Mixed Use Development” on one page, and an arial photo labeled Wrigley Field when it’s clearly a picture of Fenway Park.

• Think that the idea of putting a stadium above a train station isn’t a serious consideration?  Think again.  The study also includes this graphic, featuring trains below the playing surface of the stadium.

Proposed stadium cross-section

• Why Somerville?  I mean, other than the fact that they have some land and are interested?  Within five miles of the proposed stadium site, there are 64,000 residents of Irish descent, 57,000 with Italian heritage, 15,000 with English heritage, and 11,000 with German ancestry.  This doesn’t even take into consideration the area’s considerable Brazilian population.  It’s believed that as many as 15,000 Brazilians live in Somerville alone, and the City of Boston says more than 7,000 live in the city.  Massachusetts has the 2nd-largest concentration of Brazilians in the United States behind only Florida.

• The study used an interesting mix of stadium footprints on page 55, ranging from the expected such as Toyota Park and Crew Stadium, to European facilities such as Pittodrie and the Majedski Stadium, to the head-scratchers in Wrigley Field and Fred Yager Stadium.  The Revs could do much worse than a replica of the Majedski Stadium, by the way.

The Majedski Stadium

• And finally, what does the Revs’ potential new home look like today?  Well, not much.  Google Streetview gives us this look at the “Preferred Stadium Location”.

Inner Belt Road Today