MMO Roundtable: What Are Your Suggestions For The Area Around Citi Field?
We all know that Steve Cohen is great on Twitter, and he showed us why yet again last week. A Mets fan (who I happen to be friends with — hi JT!) tweeted about being at PNC and wishing the area around Citi Field had a similar feel, Cohen saw it and responded.
That’s not true , you can get your car fixed
— Steven Cohen (@StevenACohen2) July 18, 2021
A funny answer for sure, but also painfully true. So this week, our team is sharing what we would want to change around Citi Field.
Alex Horowitz
Having gone to PNC Park last weekend, that tweeter is 100% right. The area surrounding the ballpark is INCREDIBLE. Granted, PNC is in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, but adding a similar hotel/restaurant/bar area in Flushing/Corona would be huge!
Matt Musico
One of my favorite stadiums to be at for a ballgame (outside of Citi Field, of course) is Nationals Park in D.C. I’ve only been there for day games, but right across from the stadium, there’s a place called The Bullpen, which is an open-air bar with space for live music and even more space for about 20 pairs of cornhole boards.
It’s such a relaxed place to hang out at before a game, and what my buddies and I have always enjoyed is we can be finishing up a heated game of cornhole about 10 minutes before first pitch, but not miss any action because there’s an entrance to the stadium right across the street.
Having something like this around Citi Field would be difficult because the setting is different (I don’t need my car fixed right now), but finding a way to make that happen would be awesome.
Carl Aridas
I enjoy watching ballgames when traveling to other cities. Having seen games at Fenway, Camden Yards, at the Vet and Citizens Bank, PNC Park, Nationals Park, the Rogers Centre as well as Yankee Stadium. The better ones always seem to have lots of parking and public transportation, but far more important to the total fan experience is opportunities to shop and do non-baseball activities.
For example, whether it’s the shops and restaurants in the warehouse at Camden Yards, or the blocks of bars at Yankee Stadium, or the combination of both bars and family restaurants near the ball park in Washington, the best experience allows both planned and unplanned game attendees to go to a neighborhood and eat, drink and hand both before and after games. The venues could stand on their own, but being near a ball park would bring additional patrons. In addition, groups out at dinner may on occasion decide to walk across the street and attend a game they hadn’t planned on attending otherwise.
The land to the east of Citi Field could use a hotel, bars, family restaurants, entertainment establishments such as pool halls, night clubs, perhaps a walkway along a cleaned up Flushing Bay, similar to what Pittsburgh and Baltimore have. Neither ballpark has the opportunity to have your car serviced as Citi Field does.
Rich Sparago
It would be ideal if the Mets could make going to a game at Citi Field an overall experience rather than simply attending a game. There are so many models of this in MLB. Having been to 25 of the current 30 ballparks, I can say the fan experience is outstanding in particular at Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, PNC Park, and Petco Park.
In all of these cities, the ballpark is surrounded by bars and restaurants, where congregating with fellow fans is available hours before and after the game. At PNC, they shut the Clemente Bridge down to traffic so people can walk over it to the area around the stadium, where bars set up outdoor seating in the streets. It feels like a festival. The same is of course true at Wrigley Field, in Wrigley Ville. No automobile traffic around the stadium so people can walk from place to place safely and enjoy the entire experience.
It would be so nice to have something like this around Citi Field. Sadly, McFadden’s, which was a step in the right direction, is no longer open. I’d like to see the whole area around Citi turned into a fan experience with restaurants, bars, places to buy merchandise, and maybe even a place for kids. Will it ever happen? Maybe not, but wouldn’t it be nice?
Michelle Ioannou
I just want to be able to have bars and restaurants (multiple of each) that fans can go to to watch the game even if they don’t have tickets to the ballpark or a place for fans to get to go and watch together when the Mets are away. Wrigley, PNC, Camden, Fenway all have that experience right outside the ballpark gates — you still get that atmosphere and are surrounded by fellow fans. Plus, having Mets bars/restaurants that you can go to in the offseason can definitely help cheer up those long winter months.
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