Mixed-use entertainment districts around stadiums and transit hubs have become a familiar development model, one often promoted as a way to extend economic activity beyond event days and create new destinations within cities. Yet many of these projects struggle to sustain momentum once initial excitement around them fades, particularly when programming, phasing, or governance structures are not calibrated for long-term performance.
The challenge is not simply assessing the right mix of uses but also aligning financial feasibility, operational realities, and community expectations over time. In districts anchored by major sports franchises, this complexity is heightened by the differing priorities of team owners, developers, municipalities, and surrounding neighborhoods. Increasingly, successful projects are ones that treat sports venues not as isolated attractions but instead as one component within a larger, adaptable district strategy designed to perform year-round.
Today, people gravitate toward places that serve as modern-day villages and that offer connections and community. What began as event-driven districts anchored by sports venues is expanding into mixed-use developments that deliver a return on investment each day of the year. Increasingly, these places are being shaped as “experience districts”—environments designed to deliver social and economic value every day, not just on game day.
By combining events, hospitality, culture, retail, housing, and public gathering spaces, developers and designers have an opportunity to deliver both cultural relevance and sustainable returns.
Planning Mixed-Use Districts for Long-Term Flexibility and Phased Development
To deliver year over year, owners and developers benefit from addressing the complexity of these districts early in the planning process. Because experience districts are developed and delivered in phases, for years, the master plan must consider agile design, technology integration, and site programming that can adapt over time.
In some cases, master plans need to build upon existing structures, turning formerly isolated or industrial sites into people-friendly developments. For example, today’s sports stadiums have evolved from being built on the outskirts of town to being embedded into existing communities. In other cases, building new lends more flexibility to add numerous places to gather throughout the week.
In Reston, Virginia, the opening of the Silver Line extension of Washington, D.C. Metrorail offered an opportunity to reverse low-density sprawl with a transit-oriented development that combines amenities and services not only to capture the foot traffic of a multimodal transit hub but also to create community gathering opportunities year-round. The Reston station features two trophy-class office buildings amid a mix of retail and restaurants, whereas building massing creates outdoor amenity spaces and opportunities for collaboration and relaxation.
Balancing Financial Feasibility and Ambition in Sports-Anchored Mixed-Use Development
Experience districts are complex developments that require balancing ambition with feasibility. Sports and entertainment venues connected to multibillion dollar professional team brands must be designed to perform beyond game-day demand. That means an anchor hotel which can host meetings year-round, a variety of food and beverage options, retail that isn’t dependent on the team, open public spaces and multifamily housing to support community growth, and potential workplace offerings.
Los Angeles’ Hollywood Park, for example, anchors nearly 300 acres (120 ha) next to SoFi Stadium, home to the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers and Rams, and to such events as the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and major concerts. Additional year-round programming draws include YouTube Theater, a 6,000-seat venue for live entertainment; Cosm, an immersive events destination; and Cinépolis, a luxury movie theatre. The combined district offerings present daily options for residents and visitors.
Brook Park Cleveland: A Large-Scale Mixed-Use Sports District Case Study
Brook Park, the future home of the Cleveland Browns and the team’s new Huntington Bank Field in Ohio, is another example. Developed by the Haslam Sports Group and Lincoln Property Company, with the design and master plan by HKS, this 176 acre (70 ha) mixed-use community will ultimately include 300,000 square feet (27,870 sq m) of retail, two upscale hotels, 1,100 apartments, and 500,000 square feet (46,450 sq m) of office space.
Phase one, which is planned for delivery alongside the stadium in 2029, will include approximately 300 hotel rooms, 500 apartments, and 190,000 square feet (57,912 sq m) of traditional and experiential retail intended to drive year-round activation.
Sustainability and Resilience at the Scale of Sports and Entertainment Districts
Although large-scale stadiums, arenas, and associated experience districts aren’t often associated with sustainable design, the scale of these districts can make them opportunities for holistic thinking. For example, appropriately scaled and optimally oriented buildings that incorporate passive design strategies can ensure comfortable microclimates, provide access to daylight and nature, maximize resource use, and help ensure no assets go to waste.
More often than not, the signature spaces of experience districts are not the buildings themselves but are instead the exterior public spaces for community gathering. A regenerative design approach to these public spaces can examine how to restore essential ecological functions while connecting people to nature.
What’s more, these districts often occupy previously developed or former brownfield sites. Given their scale, an integrated open space and landscape approach can reconnect these sites to their local ecology through integrated native landscaping, thoughtful stormwater management, and habitat/food creation.
Also, an economy of scale applies when thinking at the district level. District energy infrastructure allows buildings to share resources and eliminate redundancies.
Large sites can also take advantage of renewable resources such as geothermal, solar, and wind at a scale that is more efficient than when they are tapped ad hoc, building by building. This approach can position districts as resilient community resources with long-term operational, cultural, and economic value.
With Salt Lake City and Nashville developing experience districts, and with wider sports-anchored district plans expanding to include collegiate sports locales, we now are seeing how these developments offer a framework that creates long-term returns for everyone: developers, cities, communities, team owners, and fans.
