Will downtown be the Dynamo's permanent home?

Remember earlier this year, when no one was really sure where the Dynamo would end up making their permanent home? Well, three months later, it's still unclear — and Houston is still trying to stay in the game by trying to find a place to build a soccer-specific stadium. Among the possibilities: the parking lot just across Highway 59 from Minute Maid Park, a six-square-block chunk of asphalt owned by the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority and normally used for permit parking during Astros games (it's the area highlighted in red on the map at left).

The lot, bounded by Chartres and Bastrop streets and Preston and Texas avenues, is now under a 30-year lease by the Astros, but Pam Gardner, president of business operations for the Astros, said the team could be open to the idea of a soccer stadium next door. "We've been really, really thrilled with the situation we have downtown," she said. "We would have to look at how we might look into some shared environments. Where they might put it might affect what else they have around them. Without knowing the specifics on their plan, it's hard to really address that." We're assuming the parking lot alone wouldn't be big enough to hold a stadium — Minute Maid, for example, takes up a nine-square-block piece of land — so it's not clear where the additional land would come from (given that there are relatively new upscale apartments and condos on the south and east sides of the parking lot, blocks to the north seem like the only viable option). It's also unclear how area residents would react to living across the street from a stadium and what the parking and traffic situation would be like with tens of thousands more fans coming to the area regularly — especially considering how the Dynamo and Astros' schedules coincide (basically, both teams play from March until October).

The downtown option apparently isn't the only one for the city, and it's certainly not the only one for the Dynamo, which is — or was, last we heard — also being courted by Webster, Pearland and Sugar Land. "We really want to find the site that makes the most sense for the franchise, for the sport of soccer, and what we think can give us the best opportunity to not only grow our business, but to really embrace the soccer community," Dynamo General Manager Oliver Luck told KTRK.