Did anyone see the news story about the development surrounding the new Cowboy's Stadium in Arlington? THey're proposing to build a scaled down version of NYC's Times Square around the stadium... and it's literally going to give Arlington a skyline when they build it. They're talking about high rise office, retail and residential developments... This stadium/team is going to put Arlington on the map. And FW isn't going to profit from this much at all.
First of all, we're fools if we think that Dallas isn't going to use the advantage they have - the team namesake. They will always be the Dallas Cowboys. They're never going to be the FW Cowboys or the Arlington Cowboys so we can just forget that. And, Dallas will get a lot of the "spin off" parties surrounding the SB... They have the higher-end retail, hotels, and dining that FW simply doesn't have. They have a more refined and high-end feel. Downtown FW is a jewel, but we don't have the hotel space needed for hosting a super bowl, and with the stadium being in Arlington, we can't justify building facilities just because repeated superbowls will be in Arlington (not FW). The majority of in-coming tourist who come here for the SB, will want to stay in Dallas - because that's where the major parties are going to be.
Second, Arlington has no loyalty to FW - if anything they have resentment toward both Dallas and FW for always looking down their respective noses at Arlington. This is going to be Arlington's revenge for always being considered a third class suburb in the DFW. (At one point they pushed to have it called DAFW) They're the city that had the initiative and foresight to go grab the most valuable sports franchise on Earth and do whatever it takes to get them to relocate to Arlington. FW is not going to share in that wealth - Arlington and Dallas will make sure of that.
Third, Arlington mayb be FW's "ugly step kid" now, but in a few years Arlington could very easly be saying that about FW... Arlington has done a lot of catching up with FW when it comes to population. Landing the Cowboys could be the thing that finally catapults Arlington out of Suburb status and into the Major City league.
I hate to break it to y'all, but the only thing FW will probably gain from this is the satisfaction of having the Cowboys will be in Tarrant County - I'd even be willing to be that most of the players choose to live in Dallas. Of course, we'll now have to deal with the traffic along i-30 that comes with having the new stadium in Arlington.... Our infrastructure isn't ready to handle that sort of traffic.
I'll believe it when I see it. If Arlington really cared about becoming a viable city, it should consider *GASP* public transit to pull all those thousands into and out of the district on a daily basis. Instead, with Arlington's infinite wisdom, it will probably end up with massive parking garages and surface lots and all the traffic snarls that come with auto-oriented development. I doubt that little, if any, peripheral development will come with the project and if Arlington didn't learn from the Ballpark fiasco, they never will.