SPORTSWRITER: TEARING DOWN ASTRODOME WOULD HELP HOUSTON ‘MOVE ON’ 
Depending on which city gets the Super Bowl in 2016, Houston will be vying with either Miami or San Francisco to host the big game in 2017, reports Culturemap’s Chris Baldwin, and Houston’s in great shape to put together an attractive proposal — but there’s still one thing standing in the way: “When the Astrodome opened in 1965, it deserved its Eighth Wonder of the World moniker. It screamed innovation. Now, it screams . . . embarrassment,” Baldwin writes: “There have been more than enough multi-million studies. There is no need to put off a decision yet again. Sometimes, the simplest choice, the most obvious choice, is the best one. Put together a demolition crew. . . . This isn’t Fenway Park. It’s not Wrigley Field. It’s not that old Yankee Stadium that went through all those remodels. It’s a relic that long ago lost its last bit of charm.” And if you want to save the “rotting giant,” Baldwin suggests, you’re “showing as much sense as someone featured on Hoarders.” [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
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Stadiums
Meet Lasso, your mascot for the new Grand Texas Theme Park! The armed-and-friendly blond stud has been revealed as the long face of the Texas-themed theme park’s second-go-around in Texas. Back in July 2009, developer Monty Galland announced that he had a spot in Tomball for the park’s first phase to open by April 2010. Well, that was then. Now, Galland’s back — with Lasso in tow — and presenting a revised proposal to Montgomery Country leaders, reports the Tomball Potpourri: The developer’s eyeing property near New Caney, where Grand Texas might better hitch its wagon to dinosaur-friendly EarthQuest.
If you look closely at these new renderings of Robertson Stadium’s replacement that UH released a couple of weeks ago, you can see the Downtown skyline. UH, a member of the Big East starting in 2013, says that this 40,000-seat, $105-million stadium — whose naming rights are still being shopped around — will be built with a new east-west orientation, at least in part because that’ll make the skyline look real nice on teevee.
More details and even more renderings:
From the Austin company that sends those little camera-wielding drones into the East Downtown sky, here are the latest views of construction progress on what you’re now supposed to call BBVA Compass Stadium. Expected completion date: sometime next May.
HISD has now contracted with an industrial hygienist to evaluate the drainage systems, mechanical rooms, and plumbing and electrical systems at Barnett Stadium in an attempt to determine what might have caused 22 band or dance-team members from Stephen F. Austin High School to become mysteriously ill during a football game there Friday night. Several students displayed what appeared to be symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Epidemiologists have been interviewing students and school officials “to get information on the whereabouts of the band members within the stadium and collect other health related-factors that could have played a role in the event,” the school district announced. The HISD Athletics Department is expected to announce tomorrow morning whether 2 UIL playoff games scheduled for this week at the 6800 Fairway Dr. location will be moved to a different field.
- Questions still remain about sick students at football game [abc13]
- HISD hiring own investigator in stadium illness case; facility may stay closed, games switched [West U Examiner]
Photo: Paragon Sports
IS TEXAS A&M READY TO KNOCK DOWN KYLE FIELD, TOO? 
A source tells the Texas Monthly‘s Paul Burka that Texas A&M has plans to jettison more than just its affiliation with the Big 12 in its quest to join the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference. The university has plans to tear down Kyle Field on the A&M campus in College Station and rebuild it “as a modern stadium, with a seating capacity of 90,000-plus. The only part of the current stadium that will be retained is the north end zone.” The Zone is the most recent part of the 1927 football field; it opened in 1999. [BurkaBlog] Photo: Coaches Hot Seat
University of Houston athletic director Mack Rhoades reports the university has raised $40 million of the $75 to $80 million it thinks it needs to raise by next spring in order to begin construction of a new 40,000-seat football stadium on the current site of Robertson Stadium at Cullen and Holman streets. The university’s plans for the new stadium — projected to cost $120 million — were announced last summer, along with an extensive renovation plan for the neighboring basketball venue, Hofheinz Pavilion. Construction cost savings, revenue from 22 luxury suites, 200 loge box seats and 650 club seats at the stadium, the sale of naming rights, and financing would make up the difference, Rhoades tells the Chronicle‘s Sam Khan Jr.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DYNAMO DOME “I like the shrink-wrapped look. Kinda looks like the remnants of a geodesic dome that got reworked by a hurricane…” [DanaX, commenting on Your First Official Look at Houston’s New Soccer Stadium]
It’s not as if drawings showing the industrial look of the new Dynamo Stadium hadn’t been floating around for a little while, but today marks the day the folks at Populous, the building’s designers, officially “unveiled” the design for the East Downtown soccer venue. Hiding behind that veil, of course, is . . . a giant veil: a meshy, irregular metal skin wrapping the structure, lifted up at corner entrances to reveal a glowing orange polycarbonate surface behind. Kinda like the approach to that big reception desk at the new Downtown Y — just a whole lot more, y’know, grand.
When you’ve already designed Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium, and the Toyota Center, what’s left in Houston for these guys to do? Will they get to push the button for the Astrodome demo too?
The big East Downtown orangish blob that will be Dynamo Stadium takes on a more definite shape in these new drawings. That’s a giant steel mesh wrapping the 22,000-seat soccer and football venue. Inside: 34 luxury suites, 1,000 “club” seats, and a stadium club. Separate canopies connected to the exterior mesh hang over both sidelines and a stage on the south end. The Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam reports that orange lights will shine on the stadium at night — but the tower lighting shown in earlier renderings is gone from the latest images. Maybe, as a Dynamo fan on HAIF suggests, the place is just gonna glow from within.
