Evansville’s Roberts Stadium may be losing most of its business once a downtown arena opens, but efforts to tear it down and replace it with a baseball/softball complex appears to have stalled, giving activists more time to come up with a use for the facility.
Cost is the reason why city efforts to put in a new sports complex is failing. And without a use for the land underneath it, Roberts Stadium may be avoiding the wrecking ball — for now. There’s still no realistic plan for reusing the arena; It’s one thing to throw out idea for what to do with an arena with some interesting challenges — natatorium! butterfly zoo! velodrome! botanical garden! — and another thing to come up with viable financial plan to make the change happen. There’s just not a lot of examples of creative reuses of arenas past megachurches, and even those are a crapshoot: MSG is getting a deal on the Fabulous Forum because the megachurch that bought it needs the money.
RELATED STORIES: Evansville debates Roberts Stadium future
Follow Arena Digest on Facebook and on Twitter!
Follow the latest arena news with the weekly Arena Digest newsletter. You can sign up here.
