Texas Live To Transform Entertainment District
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ARLINGTON (1080 KRLD) - The Rangers are transforming the area around Globe Life Park into a 365-day-a-year destination.
When the Rangers are in town, tens of thousands of fans cram into the ballpark to cheer on their team.
But during the off-season and when the Rangers are on the road, the area surrounding the ballpark turns desolate, with the ballpark being surrounded by little more than the finest parking lots money can buy.
In partnership with the City of Arlington, the Rangers are working to change all that with the new Texas Live district.
"We want it to become the clubhouse for fans, not only on Rangers or Cowboys game days, but really year-round," says Rob Matwick, the Rangers' executive vice president of business operations.
Texas Live will include a 300-room upscale hotel, dining, retail and entertainment, as well as a massive center atrium.
"I expect that it will have a very large open area with a whole wall that will be a sort of a video screen that will not just show one game but will have the ability to show multiple games at the same time," Matwick says.
In designing the district, the Rangers are partnering with The Cordish Companies.
"They have established this model for sports-related entertainment and destination-type activation which they've done successfully in other cities," says Matwick. "We've seen it in St. Louis and Kansas City and Philadelphia."
When Globe Life Park was being built in the early 1990s, the goal all along was to develop around the ballpark to create a live-work-play atmosphere.
Matwick says Texas Live is the first step in accomplishing this goal, as there will be more development in the near future.
"Then you start to create this vertical density, where people can now live or work in the area and walk to a restaurant or walk to one of the attractions, and then walk back home or walk back to their office," Matwick says. "And that's when it really gets exciting."
Texas Live will go up directly across from the first base gate in what is currently parking lot "A."
Construction is slated to begin sometime this fall and it's expected to be up and running by the start of the 2018 season.
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