This is an interesting discussion. The main requirements of the Championship Location is that it is in a venue that is large enough to have five fields, and seat over 20,000 people. It seems like the only options for this are NFL and MLB stadiums, unless you want to roll bleachers into a convention center like 2011, but that is uncomfortable to say the least. The venue also needs to be next to a convention center in order to hold all of the pits.
To evaluate all possible options, I made a list of all
NFL and
MLB stadiums using wikipedia. From this list, I crossed off any stadiums that did not have a roof (I just looked at the pictures to do this, so this may be inaccurate). I was left with the following 13 options.
Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona
Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas
Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri
Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan
Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana
Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana
Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas
Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington
Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida
University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona
I then searched for nearby convention centers for each of these stadiums. There does not appear to be a CC near Tropicana Field, and the ones near University of Phoenix Stadium and Reliant Stadium are over 5 miles away. The CCs near Cowboys Stadium, Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Safeco Field, Ford Field, and Mercedes-Benz Superdome do not appear to be connected to the stadiums (please correct me if I'm wrong). This leaves 5 options
Georgia Dome
Chase Field
Edward Jones Dome
Lucas Oil Stadium
Rogers Centre
Chase Field has a grass playing surface and likely cannot be covered up for 4+ days, so it doesn't appear to be an option, and the Rogers Centre is in Canada, so there are the obvious travel and passport issues that go along with it, so it doesn't seem to be an option either.
Interestingly enough, the 3 remaining options are the 3 that are commonly discussed here on CD; Georgia Dome, Edward Jones Dome, Lucas Oil Stadium.
Ranking these venues depend on personal opinion at this point, but I think the major factors include travel (minimizing distance and cost, ie. major airport), accommodation availability/cost, and ease of robot transportation from the pits to the field. Other factors include weather, nearby food/attractions and the FIRST Finale. Safety and crime is an obvious consideration, although as others have said, I think all of these cities would have similar crime issues.
While others have said Indianapolis is the most central for teams, for the teams outside of driving distance, flight cost are long and/or expensive to non-major airports. According to
wikipedia, Atlanta is the most busy airport in the US, so it likely has the cheapest rates and most direct flights. St. Louis is ranked 31st and Indianapolis is 50th. IMO, travel is the next most important metric, so Atlanta wins by a landslide, however if the stadium is in fact slated to be torn down in 2017, maybe it's not actually an option as I'm sure FIRST would want a contract longer than 2-3 years.
If Atlanta is out of the question, I would be interested to know how well connected the Lucas Oil Stadium and Indiana Convention Center are, and how easy it will be for robots to get to/from the fields.