Selecting Sites for a Sports Complex in St. Louis area

Blue Marble

G.I.S. Specialist

Clay Jarnagin

Blake Caldwell

Matthew Mittler

Mike McClure

Desiree Thompson

New Expansion in Major League Soccer (MLS)

Introduction

• Blue Marble was started in 2004 by a group of SIUE GIS graduates with experience in various GIS projects involving site selections, network analysis, service areas, as well as other geospatial analysis

• The Blue Marble understands that you, our client, need a sports stadium built in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, in which the primary tenant will be the a new MLS franchise

• Building a state of the art facility is essential, but it is our job to provide you with the optimal location for a new MLS franchise stadium by using GIS technologies

Area of Interest

Problem

• The location must avoid all potential physiographic issues as well as capture the business along with the human aspect

• The site must be large to support the facilities including stadium, parking and possible expansion areas

• The site must be easily accessible to the Metro St. Louis population

Sports Complex Statistics

Location All NFL MLB NBA NHL MLS

Downtown 79 16 15 23 19 6

City Limits 34 7 12 6 4 5

Outside of City Limits

31 9 3 1 7 11

Total 144 32 30 30 30 22

Methodology• Gathering data

– Elevation

– Land Use/Land Cover

– Soils

– Roads

– County Boundaries

Methodology

• Elevation

– Downloaded from data.geocomm.com

– Originally SDTS format in feet

– 7.5 minute quadrangles

– 10x10 meter cells

– 51 quadrangles

– Converted to DEM

– Mosaicked into one image

– Created slope from final elevation file (percent)

Methodology

• Land Use/Land Cover (LULC)

– Downloaded from USGS Land Cover Institute

– 2006 data originally in GRID

– 30x30 meter cells

– Recoded from 95 classes down to 15 classes

• Soils

– gSSURGO data from USDA Web Soil Survey

– Originally GRID format

– 30x30 meter cells

– Recoded by hydric soil classification

Methodology

• Roads

– Downloaded TIGER data from U.S. Census Bureau

– Reprojected to UTM

– Converted to Raster (.img)

– Created search buffer 1 mile off of roads (54 pixels)

• County Boundary

– Downloaded from Census

– Reprojected to UTM

– Selected counties from Area of Interest

Criteria

• Recoded LULC so that land uses we want are values of 1 and land uses we do not want are values of 0

• Used All Developed, Barren Land, Grassland/Herbaceous, Hay/Pasture, & Cultivated Crops

• Only included Non-hydric soils in criteria

• Only pixels within the ½ mile buffer off of roads were in criteria

• Clump criteria using 4 neighbor option

• Sieved off clumps smaller than 100 acres (450 pixels)

• 530 sites

530 sites

Criteria

• Summary report of matrix using slope

• Export zonal statistics to the clump attribute table

• Perimeter tool on the clump

• Make a new field: perimeter/area

• Make two recodes of the clump– One so that values of 1 have an average slope of < 0.25%

– Another so that values of 1 have a perimeter/area less than 45 meters/acre

• After narrowing criteria, there are 94 sites

• Manually select sites to delete using Google Earth

• 4 final sites were chosen

94 sites

1St Site • Pros

– Brownfield site

– Middle of downtown

• Cons– Lack of space for parking

– Low acreage

2nd Site• Pros

– By I-255, I-64, Route 157

– Plenty of land for parking/expansion

– Close distance to Metrolink

• Cons– Low population density

3rd Site • Pros

– By I-255 and I-55/70

– Next to Fairmount Park Racetrack

– Room for expansion

• Cons– Near train tracks

4th Site• Pros

– By I-255 and I-270

– Near SIUE

• Cons – Farthest from Downtown

– Poor Public Transportation

Conclusions

• Using Geographic Information System technologies our analysts at Blue Marble have chosen four site selections that we have determined to be the best locations for a Major League Soccer Stadium

• Highlighting Site 1 as the best location due to local, population, and transportation benefits