Should St. Jude Build an On-Campus Stadium?

Let's get real. If St. Jude is serious about becoming a major research institution, they'll need a new stadium. The only question is, where?

There are those who think a renovation of the Liberty Bowl will suffice. But a renovation will not provide the state-of-the-art amenities that patients and researchers have come to expect of a top flight research institution.

Again, where?

Here's my proposed, on-campus, location for the stadium.

This location would be on the present site of the Patient Care Center, which could be moved to a more convenient location on the outskirts of the campus. Also, traffic down North Parkway could be routed through a tunnel underneath the stadium. If this proves to be too expensive, ambulance and other emergency traffic could easily be routed down Chelsea on game day.

Greenway 2074!

Budget item from Tuesday's City Council session:

$400,000, reduced from proposed $1 million, to start work on Wolf River Greenway.

Believe it or don't, but I wasn't going to say anything much more about Beale Street Landing until I read that.

We're going to spend $19 million of Memphis' money and $10 million of federal and state money, for a project whose popular support rivals the new stadium. Meanwhile a very popular project, a project that spans the length of the entire city, that will promote our health, recreation, environment and almost certainly our economy, is reduced to 4% of the funding of BSL. Since the project will cost around $27 million in 2007 dollars, we only have to wait 67 years in 2007 appropriations to walk the Greenway.

Beware the new stadium! They'll lead with hype and hope we follow with apathy. And they won't take 67 years to build it.