Hello, My name is Kyle aka Mytra and I have come here to show you why I think that Cleveland, OH would be one of the best places to hold the FRC championship.
Cleveland is one of the most culturally diverse
cities in Ohio, it has a huge POC population and has been a LGBTQIA+ friendly city for as long as I can remember. Cleveland also has a huge STEM background when it comes to Aerospace Engineering at the nearby NASA Glenn Research Center, Software Engineering at places like Hyland Software, Manufacturing at places like M.A.G.N.E.T (Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network), or Cybersecurity with Key Bank (One of the top banks in the US).
Cleveland is also a very big but tight knit city, it has 2 Stadiums (First Energy Stadium, Progressive Field) and 2 domes (Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, Wolstein Center) which are all fairly close together. There are also alot of Hotels in the area and surrounding areas which would be perfect for teams to get to and from competitions from just around the corner to around 4 miles away is full of hotels ranging from cheap but high-quality to the best of the best, money doesn’t matter.
Ending my little topic about how and why I think that Cleveland, OH should be the site for the next Championship is that there are already 2 competitions held here! The Buckeye Regional is held in the Wolstein Center and the Great Lakes Science Center holds the Curiosity Open as a off-season competition so Cleveland isn’t a stranger to First and is already well-equipped to hold something as big as a FRC Championship considering that the 2021 NFL Draft was also held in Cleveland. All in all, this was just a fun little topic I felt like writing on how I thought that the beautiful city of Cleveland should hold the FRC championship. I felt prompted after hearing about all the horrible stories about Texas and about what they have been doing to their LGBTQIA+ Youth. Please leave questions, comments, concerns, and funny jokes in the comments I will be glad to answer any of them!
I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but I’m highly confident none of the facilities you cite are anywhere near large enough to host a FIRST Championship event. FIRST Championship is orders of magnitude larger than any regional event with 600-800 FRC teams, plus FTC and FLL on top of that, all which (ideally) have to be hosted in the same facility, or at least between two directly adjacent facilities.
The last time Champs utilized a dome (outdoor stadiums are not viable), the only thing that fit in it was the 6-8 competition fields, there’s simply is no room for pits, so they have to be located elsewhere, or the entire event has to be hosted in a massive convention center on the scale of Cobo (Detroit) or George R Brown (Houston). There are VERY few facilities that meet these criteria in the entire country, and all of them are typically booked 10 years out.
It’s a nice idea, don’t get me wrong, but the logistics just don’t work with current infrastructure.
Hey it definitely seems like Cleveland has some great spaces however from the research I did about your suggested venue I don’t think you you realize the amount of space that is needed. I’m gonna work with the 2023 Houston layout for simplification
The official dimensions of the George R Brown center are 550,000 square feet(5100 square meters) and that was just one the first floor. You need space for 8 fields, 600 teams, seating and just general breathing space.
From what I could find the venue in Ohio that you suggested the Wolstein center is about 140,000 square feet
Also that building doesn’t look like it has a good load in stations. In Houston there were a lot of loading docks for trucks to carry all the equipment for the fields and displays.
That just covers FRC but FTC and FLL need space as well which is why multiple full floors would be needed.
It was a nice suggestion but yeah there are lot more logistics needed that you thought.
Apparently the Greater Columbus Convention Center has a 447,000 sq ft (noncontiguous) Exhibit hall plus a 114,000sq ft ballroom that might come close to the requirements, but that’s about the only thing in the ball park that I could find in Ohio.
Much love for my city. The only venue that would come close to Champs-level hostability is the IX Center - if they can do an amusement park, they can do robots
IX has the square footage (1.2mil). It’s literally a stone’s throw from KCLE and GRC. But the hospitality infrastructure is very car-dependent. In Houston, it’s incredibly practical to plan your trip around public transportation. While the Red Line will get you from Hopkins to Tower City, somehow there is no direct way to make the ~3 mile journey from Arrivals to IX without carving an hour out of your day, not to mention the lack of hotels in between.
Cleveland 'till I die, and all that. Just probably not for Champs.
As someone from Michigan, my issue with Worlds in the midwest, is the unpredictable weather. For worlds in Houston, many teams walk from hotels. Also, part of the event spills out into the street for the food trucks/block party. This year, it was barely above freezing temperatures in southern Michigan during worlds and that would highly detract from the event in my opinion.
When worlds is a little further south, I think it provides a little more certainty that the weather will be a good (not a guarantee, but better than your odds in the midwest).
Water game 2027, champs hosted in Cleveland Ohio hosted in tents on barges floating in Lake Erie! and divisions are chosen, based on a fishing tournament the day prior.
As much as I want to see champs Cleveland happen the only way I see it posible is If the ix center was actually in downtown Cleveland and all the other programs representation at champs was heavily reduced or eliminated.
This will probably never happen but until then all we can hope for is champs to move to somewhere in the Midwest and more Ohio teams qualifying!
