Abandoned visits the Great American Pyramid of Memphis, Tennessee

I’m imagining an American Gods type scenario in which an up-and-coming deity of consumerism gleefully usurps the position once held by the elder gods of the Egyptian pantheon.

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The sad thing is they never think they are throwing it away. Redevelopment ideas are like Charlie Brown’s kickoffs. Doesn’t matter how many times the cities get fleeced, THIS time will be different.

Lived in Memphis for 10 years, it’s like a junior Detroit in it’s never ending parade of corrupt politicians who will pour money into every harebrained scheme because they’re just so desperate to reverse the slide. It’s really hard to overstate the collective low self esteem of Memphis. After the NFL snubbed Memphis for 30 years and then humiliated it by not only moving the Oilers to Nashville but played for a season in Memphis (it was supposed to be two, but somehow they were shocked to find out that Memphis wasn’t interested in being Nashville’s booty call), the NBA was a consolation prize (the main basketball attraction in town being Memphis State/U Memphis).

Fuck that Fedex forum and the deal they made that guaranteed the pyramid would become useless. A 10 year old facility wasn’t good enough for the NBA? Then fuck them. But no, Memphis had to have a “major league” team no matter the cost. News flash: no city has ever sports-arena-ed it’s way out of grinding entrenched poverty.

Only went there once, for the Titanic exhibition. It was in the bottom floor- which is enormous. There is soooo much space in there.

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There is plenty wrong with Los Angeles government but I am happy that the city went for many years not caving in to the demands of prospective NFL teams in order to win a team back, and now after a long hiatus the NFL is returning to the area with a stadium built with private funding. (Yeah, I’m sure there are massive tax breaks but at least we didn’t pay directly for the damn thing.)

However during our two decades without a team many NFL teams did successfully use the threat of moving to Los Angeles to coerce their local governments to build or renovate their venues, so there is that.

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Everything I’ve read about sports arenas indicates that it’s structurally impossible for them to be anything other than money-sinks - the kinds of deals that sports teams have made standard, across the country, means that cities are fundamentally just subsidizing teams by building these things. There’s all sorts of justification, that the teams bring in business that’s good for the city (even if the tax revenue bump it’s supposed to bring never happens), but everything I read suggests even that is, at best, wildly overstated. It’s just a matter of degree - some of the deals are worse than others, but none of them are financially good for the local government.

If they were being honest, they’d admit they were subsidizing wealthy sports teams (instead of museums, public transport, social programs, etc.), and the fact that they don’t do that suggests cities know that citizens would be less likely to accept it if they knew the truth.

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I do wonder about this. Cities tend to do a lot of obfuscation to hide the ultimate financial impacts of building stadiums from the citizens, but enough has been made public that I wonder just how naive local officials are being. It feels like, in part, sports teams bring some sort of status to the city, and pleased fans give politicians political boosts - especially as the financial costs don’t become apparent often until long after people have left office. So politicians have incentives to build stadiums, even knowing they’re not a good idea, financially, and they have incentive to lie about how good a deal they think it is.

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Blockquote “Where are they?”

Monroeville, PA

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Review of “Abandoned - Memphis Pyramid”

structure was not abandoned at all, very misleading
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

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Yah, every few years someone does another study on this, and it always ends up being hogwash. Like, nearby sandwich shops do better on game day or whatever, but that gain is stamped out by the traffic, garbage, noise, pollution, crime, and other negative economic effects of a huge sporting event.

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What a shame the video started with such a cringey ‘Whaaaaatsssup’ that I didn’t bother watching the rest.

The studies seem to suggest that building just about anything but a sports stadium would have bigger economic benefits to the local community. So I suppose in this case, by having a fishing store, they’ve hit on the best possible use - if they hadn’t spent $130+ million on the building.

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Although they seem to be converting a lot of enclosed malls to outdoor “lifestyle centers” lately. Which may be great in California, but not so much in the rest of the country where extreme cold or heat are common.

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Civic pride is a helluva drug. It’s edifice complex. Giant identifiable attractions and sports teams get your city on tv and movies and news in a way that investing in basic services does not. And they think that that exposure will help their city grow, but when people are weighing where they want to live, actually put their money where their mouth is, they want good jobs, good schools, low crime, and while a lot of people also care about having entertainment and things to do, would never put “has an NBA team” above those things.

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The idea of a covered shopping space wasn’t new. Shopping arcades are basically like a mall, but usually only cover one street, or a small market.


The difference is that, (as usual), in America they’re much, much, bigger.

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