Both teams sought new stadiums in the s to replace the multipurpose Riverfront Stadium. In the early s, Bengals owner Mike Brown suggested that Riverfront Stadium was becoming an obsolete NFL stadium because it lacked an adequate amount of luxury suites and other amenities. Over the next several years, Brown struggled to gain support for a new stadium for the Bengals. However, in Hamilton County voters approved a referendum allowing a new stadium to be built.
Constructed just blocks away from Riverfront Stadium, groundbreaking ceremonies occurred on April 25, As it is Teflon-coated, dirt and grime will not stick to it.
The canopy is designed to last 25—30 years. Each of the suites has retractable glass windows along with twelve spacious fixed stadium seats and four elevated seats at a drink rail with a view of the game. The company's design brief for the stadium was to include acoustic design, the sound system, scoreboards, large screen displays, distributed video MATV systems, broadcast cabling and a coaching video system along with audio and video systems for private suites, restaurants, clubs and concourses.
The system features the largest video display boards ever implemented in an NFL stadium, designed to work in tandem with a distributed audio system delivering extraordinary low-frequency reinforcement backed by a host of ancillary systems for the clubs, MATV, team administrative areas and more.
The solution also included broadcast booths and the scoreboard video control room. The control room is capable of producing game-day video, commercials, and coaches shows.
West of Central Avenue is limited game-by-game parking. Location: The stadium is approximately five blocks west of Cinergy Field. The southern border of the stadium is one block from the Ohio River, and will be connected to the riverfront with a public park. Dimensions: The stadium covers approximately 22 acres and is feet high.
Seating Capacity: The stadium has 65, seats on three levels, including 7, club seats and private suites. Playing Surface: Natural turf, heated to extend growing season and prevent frozen field. Private Suites: Each of the suites features retractable glass windows, allowing fans the option to watch in climate-controlled comfort or to bring in the outdoor experience.
Suite holders enjoy premium parking, an exclusive entrance, specialized catering, personalized concierge service and elegant interior designs. Suites include 12 spacious fixed stadium seats and four elevated seats at a drink rail with a view of the game. Club Seating: Club patrons enjoy extra-wide, padded seats at the prime football viewing level with in-seat food and beverage service, and access to the Club Level Lounges featuring fine dining as well as prime views of the downtown skyline or riverfront.
Total Enclosed Area: 1,, square feet over 40 acres Fully accessible: Ramps, elevators, escalators, and stairs; Accessible to handicapped individuals. Scoreboards: Two end-zone scoreboards, both with video capability. Click Here to Get Your Personalized Scoreboard Concessions: 56 fixed locations with varied menu themes; a total of points of sale.
Rest Room Facilities: More than 1, fixtures, with separate individual family areas. Team Facilities: Administrative offices, training facility, coaches' offices, meeting rooms.
Adjacent Practice Facility: Two natural turf fields and one artificial turf field. Retail Sales: Retail store housing NFL merchandise and eight fixed locations for novelty sales plus portable stands. Design Drawings: Over 1, drawings produced by the architects and engineers. Pasted together these would cover almost a half acre. Reinforced Steel: Over 11, tons of steel bars to reinforce the cast in place concrete.
If the average bar was one inch in diameter, this would stretch for 1, miles. The two new stadiums wanchor a whole new waterfront redevelopment which will include new retail, housing, parkland and the National Underground Freedom Center, a world class museum celebrating the city's role as a transit point for runaway slaves during the 19th century.
The stadium seats almost 66, and is unmistakably striking in its asymmetrical architecture. Unlike Cinergy Field, you can enjoy sweeping views of the city scape from almost anywhere in the building - whether it be the city skyline at one end or the river and Covington Kentucky from the other.
When we visited there was still plenty of road construction going on around the stadium, but it was still easy to navigate, and plenty of tailgating going on though not in size and scope to that here in Buffalo. Outside the stadium is a huge plaza area, and there was plenty of entertainment and events going on outside.. Being a sun drenched 60 degree day, we took opportunity to enjoy the ambience. The Bowl Once inside we were impressed at the canyon wide concourses, the many ramps and staircases and escalators to the upper level named the "canopy level" yes there is a canvas canopy covering a portion of the top stands.
There are gigantic jumbotrons at each end zone, with one of the jumbotrons being off center to add to the asymmetrical look. On the sideline balconies were LED sideline boards, displaying not only stats and information but crystal clear video graphics and cool advertisements. The building itself is so beautiful, but there is a compelling need for a stadium interior designer to come in and finish the job.
Things that Caught our Eye Send this one straight to the HR department - the team salutes employees of the month with their names and photos on the jumbotron during a TV timeout. Season ticket holders can nominate a particularly friendly usher, vendor, security guard etc. Apparently the staff there really competes for this honor! Already this new venue is a terrific football experience - with a little spit and polish, completion of the waterfront plan and maybe a competitive team, this could be one of the best venues in the NFL.
But Bengals owner Mike Brown said the team is being scapegoated again. With county budget deficits causing cuts in jail space, prisoner releases and public safety concerns, Pepper said he's considering a plea to the NFL for a bailout. We have this first-rate stadium on the river, and 10 blocks north we have an under-funded county government.
There have been many attempts to scapegoat this situation for political reasons. I just think it's odd how it has cropped up here. The county and Bengals then negotiated a lease. The Bengals' final lease payment under the May 29, contract was paid this month. After , taxpayers start paying the Bengals. For the nine years ending in , the contract requires the county to pay the Bengals "for any and all expenses of any nature whatsoever incurred by the Team relating to the Stadium Complex for the immediately preceding lease year.
One clause in the contract requires the county to add any improvements that are adopted by at least 14 other NFL teams, including new turf, new video screens, new sound systems or even "holographic replays.
The difference is that the county wanted the team's rent up front, because it was facing two ballpark projects, for the Bengals and Reds, he said. As player salaries rise and ticket sales stay flat or decline during bad years, like the latest losing season, the Bengals will need help to keep up with other teams, Brown said. The team's fans - along with ticket brokers - who had financially invested in the Bengals' success are feeling let down now that their seat license contracts are looking less like blue-chip stocks and more like junk bonds.
They are merely the rights to buy season tickets for individual seats at Paul Brown Stadium. Ownership of a COA has been a season ticket requirement since the stadium opened in , but the contracts can be resold at market price, giving season-ticket holders the option of using the Bengals success - or lack thereof - as an investment tool. The majority of fans purchase COAs as an emotional purchase and don't really care about appreciation in value.
But, if you buy now on Bengals COAs, you're probably going to see a significant increase in value over the next four years. The Bengals realize fans are frustrated and financially squeezed. So with a Jan. COA holders of club seats, which feature access to club level lounges, need only to renew their tickets for two more years, which might be welcome relief for fans whose lengthy club leases just expired.
If enough fans are convinced to hold on to their COAs by renewing season tickets, the Bengals could continue their streak of 44 straight sold-out games at Paul Brown Stadium. But Burks said the market price for upper deck COAs are especially low right now because so many fans are trying to sell them, creating a case of too much supply for the demand.
But that assumes stadium sales-tax revenue falls only 1 percent. So far this year, those numbers have declined an average of more than 7 percent. Right now, the county has no plan to deal with the problem. Officials plan to have some options over the next month.
A deficit means that the county wouldn't have enough money to pay the many organizations that it is obligated to pay out of that fund.
The fund is so short that there is not enough money for the property tax credit this year. The deficit has long been predicted, but the recession-driven sales tax plunge has moved up the doomsday. The problem: the fund's financing plan was based on economic assumptions that are faltering. The plan assumed a 3 percent growth in sales tax between and In the s, that was considered conservative.
The reality is collections averaged only 1 percent growth between and And that was before the recession.
Voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase in to pay for the two stadiums and a property tax rollback. The stadium fund is made up of sales tax revenue. Voters passed a sales tax increase in to pay for new stadiums for the Cincinnati Bengals and the Reds. About 30 percent of the proceeds go back to property owners in the form of a credit on their tax bills.
The rest goes to pay stadium construction debt and cover the leases with the teams. Some money also goes to the schools. The stadium fund is about to go into the red, mostly because sales tax revenue has failed to keep pace with projections. Low tax collections have endangered the fund set aside to pay for the venues' debt. The three county commissioners made it clear that reducing or eliminating the property tax rollback - in other words, raising property taxes - will be the last option they will consider.
Instead, they hope negotiations with other stakeholders - the teams and Cincinnati Public Schools - will produce enough revenue to bridge the gap. The rollback promise helped the county sell the stadium tax package to voters.
They approved a half cent sales tax increase in to pay for new stadiums for the Bengals and Reds. The financial model for the stadium fund assumed sales tax would grow 3 percent a year - which was a conservative estimate during the s. But revenue has averaged only 1. It dropped into negative territory five of the last nine years. The administration will present recommendations to commissioners in November about how to fill the gap.
Commissioners must vote on the rollback by the end of the year. That money will be due in along with repayment of funds to the stabilization account. County officials want to avoid any personnel or public safety cuts. Some additional money will also come from changes and settlements on riverfront projects. County commissioners said they also plan to come up with a long-term solution to the stadium fund deficit within the next few weeks.
The commissioners came up with the plan after deciding not to eliminate a property tax credit promised to residents. The sales tax revenue needed to fund the payments has come in under budget and the county is scrambling to pull together the needed cash.
Commissioners have said tax increases are not an option. Long-term fixes to the deficit -which will grow exponentially after next year - could include tax increases or fees on riverfront-related purchases like food, beer, or even tickets. The latter idea has tentative support from two of the three commissioners, but would need the approval of legislators and the sports teams. The immediate issue of next year's deficit, however, remains unresolved.
Assistant Administrator Christian Sigman gave assurances that the problem won't force the county into bankruptcy or cause it to default on bills. The team has offered to replace carpet inside the stadium's club level area, convert to an electronic ticketing system and put in a new playing field. Those improvements are the county's responsibility under current lease terms. Blackburn wrote to Thompson. Commissioners are reviewing the team's letter to decide what steps to take. County commissioners say one of the concessions appears to allow the Bengals to end the lease - and potentially leave Cincinnati - in That's nearly 10 years earlier than the current lease allows.
The Bengals, however, told the media and commissioners that they are not asking to get out of the lease early. The paragraph in question simply solidifies the lease as it currently stands, until , according to the team. Starting in , the annual lease would become a "team option. The commissioners took this paragraph to mean that the Bengals could decide not to extend the lease and leave town.
The lease also requires the county to reimburse the Bengals an extra 5 percent for those costs every year. It's unclear if the county's yearly payment will actually cover all of the team's game-day costs.
What the county will pay the Bengals for game-day costs could become complicated. But, that same lease sets an annual limit on how much the county will pay. Bengals management said in a statement they believe the county should reimburse the team only for the capped payment amount listed in the lease.
He believes the Bengals will be open to negotiate how other upgrades to keep the stadium competitive will be paid. The setup encourages the Bengals to think of upgrades the county might need to pay for in the stadium, said Roger Noll, a Stanford University professor who studies publicly-financed stadium deals. Other teams across the country are giving the Bengals plenty of ideas for things the stadium might need. The New York Giants have a virtual reality zone for fans in their stadium, completely financed privately.
Some teams are in the process of building a sports bar section in their stadium, said Mark Rosentraub, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in sports management.
The game-day experience is changing rapidly to attract young sports fans, said Rosentraub, who has brokered roughly 20 deals between public governments and sports teams to build new complexes. The Bengals, he guesses, will face pressure to catch up if they want the county-owned stadium to continue to bring in fans.
The Bengals' sent their letter at a time when three NFL teams are considering exits from their home cities for a new stadium.
NFL owners approved last week a request from the St.
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