Wednesday, October 18 2017

Columbus, welcome to the stadium extortion racket. 🏟

October 18, 2017

Goodbye Crew. Hello Wednesday. It's James.

By now you've heard the news. Columbus Crew is almost certainly headed to Austin.

Even if you don't care about soccer, it's a devastating day to see something torn down that many thousands of Columbus people spent 22 years building. This city supported MLS from the beginning, even when that seemed like a foolhardy thing to do in the early dark days of US soccer, and now this is our reward.

Here is our Crew coverage to date:Crew SC Will Leave Columbus For Austin, Unless A Downtown Stadium Is Built [Wiley]Our explainer on the situation, with Twitter and local government reaction, what a downtown stadium would look like, and what happens next.Columbus Should Absolutely Not Build Anthony Precourt A New Crew Stadium [Arney]Publicly financed stadiums are nearly universally bad deals. As much as I would love to see an MLS stadium in the Arena District, it would be foolish for the city to use public money to build it. This article explains how I came to that conclusion.Crew Players And Staff Had To Find Out About Move Via Friends And Social Media [Wiley]Precourt seems to have handled this with as little class as possible, every step of the way, including the way staff and team were informed.Crew SC Has Already Hired Austin PR Firm [Wiley]In a sign this is probably already a done deal, Precourt is operating a marketing outfit masquerading as a grassroots campaign to try to drum up interest in Austin for the team's arrival.We'll continue covering all angles of this story as it continues to develop.

Wednesday Weather 🌡69 - Sunny. ☀️

Navigator Originals ✏️The 9 Foods That Pretty Much Define Columbus [Miller]Ok, so, it wasn't all about the Crew yesterday. Are these the 9 foods that define Columbus?Dinosaurs Are Coming! COSI’s Newest Dino Exhibit Is Set To Open Next Month [Miller]I almost feel like it's flown under the radar a bit, with not much local discussion since the initial announcement, but COSI is set to open a large new dinosaur exhibit next month, as well as their new underground parking garage and outdoor space.

Around Town 🏘The Columbus Dispatch made their city council endorsements and ... endorsed all the incumbents. I am not sure this will come as a surprise. [Dispatch]Breakfast With Nick visits Lisska Bar & Grill. I seem to put every place Nick visits on my to do list, so take this with that caveat, but Lisska looks extremely cool. Very old fashioned and divey in the best possible way. [Breakfast With Nick]A new media site looks at Columbus as a potential tech and entrepreneur friendly city, and finds potential. [Axios/Hart]Two more Crew items: one of the biggest soccer publications and websites in the world notes what an animal Precourt seems to be, pointing out that he seems to have planned this move all along. [FourFourTwo]And Deadspin welcomes us to the stadium extortion racket. [Deadspin]

Longread Remember Nora, the polar bear cub at the Columbus Zoo? Zookeepers here raised her for the first year of her life, after her mother rejected her. Nora was moved to Portland, Oregon when she was almost one. Now, she's been moved on to Utah on the recommendation of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.Oregon Live has a longread about her life, and includes talk of her time in Columbus, as well as what's happened since. It's a terrifically produced piece of journalism. Click through and look at the looped video of Nora sleeping at the Columbus Zoo that starts the piece, and you'll be hooked.Oregon Live: The Loneliest Polar Bear

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