I'm kind of conflicted about the whole thing. I've lived just north of the East Town/Park East area for a while now, and if the stadium were built in there, I could have easily walked to games. On the other hand, even after an Admirals game the traffic around the Bradley Center area can be frustrating. As someone who gets annoyed as it is now trying to find a parking spot on a Friday or Saturday night, it would almost be impossible to park on the lower East Side if they would have built the stadium in that corridor downtown. There's plenty of building going on in the area too, just not where the Park East was. There's the North End Development just north of where the freeway was in the old Pfister and Vogel spot. There's the condos popping up along Commerce St... There's the hotel they're building on Water and Juneau, plus the one they're planning on Edison St. Those are on top of all the buildings that were recently completed, like Kern Center, the building that went up on Ogden and Milwaukee. The Gallun tannery, Goodlife restaurant, and the condos kiddie corner from Goodlife. There might have been even more condos built if they built the stadium downtown, but it could have also made the area even harder to afford for the average person. Does anyone actually have measurements of how much space a stadium would take up? Aside from the area between 4th and 6th street and McKinley and Juneau (which was opened up after they tore down the freeway) there's not a lot of open space.