Lonely Florida Panthers Seek Expansion

Published

on February 11, 2008

in Bank Atlantic Center, Broward, Florida Panthers, Mixed Use and Sprawl

Okay, let me get this straight. The Florida Panthers spurned their downtown Miami digs in 1998 for the Bank Atlantic Center on the western fringes of suburbia. Now the Panthers are feeling a little bit lonely along the River of Grass and want to create a Mixed-Use Facility in western Broward?

The company said the project would create a source of funding for ongoing capital improvements, allow it to expand its programming to events that it is unable to secure because of the lack of hotel infrastructure in the area, and create a cultural hub for western Broward County.

Lack of hotel infrastructure in the area? I didn’t see that one coming when they built that foolish stadium out west. Now the Panthers want to make suburban sprawl the center of culture in western Broward, when will the stupidity end?

3 Responses to “Lonely Florida Panthers Seek Expansion”

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1 Anonymous
Feb 11th, 2008 at 11:45 am

Hey the old Miami Arena is still there, maybe they can move back there. They are planning on building a bunch of hotels in Park West area. They really need to stop building so many arenas, stadiums, and golf courses. There are plenty.
2 Steven
Feb 12th, 2008 at 2:01 am

they aren’t complaining about their arena and are not planning on leaving the arena either, they mainly want to build more infrastructure around the arena since it is not within walking distance of many restaraunts, hotels, or anything else aparently.

In reality, the nearest restaraunt and entertainment area is in “The Oasis” at Sawgrass Mills. While it is only a quarter of a mile in distance, there is no pedestrian paths taking people to that area, making the walking distance roughly a half a mile as well as necessitating the crossing of a 6 lane road (3 lanes in each direction with 2 turn lanes also at the only crossing locations) which during game days can have pretty heavy traffic.

Personally, I like their idea of adding the infrastructure around the arena to make it a better facility. I know that they are planning similar projects on the Dolphin Stadium property. My biggest complaint is basically that they had actually invested a couple of extra dollars and consulted an urban planner, they would be able to skip out of a lot of the expense they are going to incur now that they have to play catch-up with their poorly designed facility.
3 JM Palacios
Feb 12th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Steven, I was thinking the same thing. They want to build this right next to gigantic Sawgrass Mills! What would solve a lot of problems is building good pedestrian access to the Sawgrass Mills. Then they can get a developer to build a hotel in Sawgrass Mills if that’s what they really want.

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