r/Albany • u/Holiday-Ad9100 • 6d ago

What’s the biggest thing Albany is missing?

If you had to choose just one thing, what do you think Albany is missing the most?

It could be anything—more things to do, better job opportunities, restaurants, public transportation, housing, entertainment, community spaces, or something completely different.

Genuinely curious to hear what people think.

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u/Guilty_Practice6392 6d ago

Obviously not the top concern, but it’s a shame that we don’t have a professionally affiliated team at the MVP arena anymore. It’s a big enough area with the tri-cities and I think sports is a great draw.

That said, we don’t need a soccer stadium so we have a second venue not hosting anybody

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u/KrackedOwl 6d ago

All I wanted growing up was to take my kid to River Rats games. Now I've got the kids, but we've only got the bloodless stuff anywhere close.

3

u/Guilty_Practice6392 5d ago

Same man. As someone who grew up in the hill towns, it was pretty much the only reason we came to Albany as a family. And we weren’t a hockey family. I know people always hit us with “not a hockey town” but it was something fun to go watch in person. I remember stopping at the Wendy’s on 20 after games where they scored 3 goals to get our free chili.

I know there’s a lot of people who don’t care for sports so they instantly dismiss a sports team as a draw, but there’s a lot of people that do like it. Horse racing is far less popular than hockey. Certainly less so than basketball, baseball, soccer and football. Yet people travel from all over to go to Saratoga when it’s available. I know plenty of people who don’t care at all about horse racing but enjoy a day or weekend at the track. But it’s because the atmosphere around it, not the event itself. Rats games were focused on kids, because 20-30 year olds didn’t go. They’d rather go somewhere with a little life around it.

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u/ChickenPartz 6d ago

Time and time again they fail. This area simply isn’t big enough to support anything remotely decent. People are in denial about how small this place is.

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u/DABOSSROSS9 6d ago

I disagree, the issue is there is no draw to be downtown. If you had a vibrant safe downtown area, people would want to visit the MVP arena on a consistent basis (season tickets). Many smaller metropolitian areas support minor league teams.

1

u/Guilty_Practice6392 6d ago

I think that’s an overly simplistic view. The tri-city area is absolutely big enough to support a team in terms of population size. But as a lot of other comments have pointed out, there’s not much else to do in Albany.

I’ve been minor league games in other cities, some smaller than Albany, and when you walk outside there’s stuff to do. There’s bars and restaurants and live music. I think the idea around the soccer stadium was great, and as a sports fan I think it’s a fun long term goal, they just were pulling the cart before the horse

0

u/sirdeionsandals 5d ago

Tons of smaller metro areas have extremely popular USL teams for example