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Looks like the New England Revolution stadium discussion is staying hot.
Not long after the Boston Globe published a piece about South Boston as a viable location for a stadium, The Drug Is Football released what look to be cellphone photos of planning documents attributed to major design and architecture firm Populous. The photos seem to indicate that Populous is leading a project to design a Revolution venue at that location.
If this is real - and, let's be honest, who would have the motivation to tell a lie this elaborate - then things are progressing along even more rapidly than the Globe article may have indicated.
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When asked for comment, team representatives echoed the following statement from investor/operator Jonathan Kraft:
"We are currently developing concepts for how a soccer stadium for the Revolution can benefit the greater Boston area. Once we have more developed plans, we will comment further."
A couple of conclusions could feasibly be drawn here. One, the plans may well be in an advanced stage, and the Revs want it quiet. This makes perfect sense. The club and fans have been burned before, and there's a long history all over the country of vehement "not in my backyard" opposition to major development in almost any neighborhood. You have to figure that the club wants to have a complete and airtight proposal to bring to the City and any community groups before all this gets out, so they don't have to worry about anti-stadium sentiments growing out of misinformation and rumor.
Two, the Revs could be engaging Populous, but may also be talking to other firms. This takes TDIF's piece and the Kraft comments together and tries to read between the lines of what the club is saying about the project. This requires some of the first proposition to be true, but would indicate that things are not quite as advanced as we may hope.
Three, someone's playing a trick on every soccer fan in New England. That would be pretty awful.
Either way, this is incredibly exciting. Not since Jonathan Kraft erroneously asserted that the Revs would break ground on a stadium within two years (remember that? It was 2010, right? Or even longer ago?) has something that feels this real been in the news.