Robert Kraft wants a soccer stadium built in Everett.
The owner of the National Football League’s New England Patriots franchise and of Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution, Robert Kraft, wants to move his soccer business out of his NFL stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts and place it in Everett, just outside of Boston. Kraft has been looking for years for a home for his team. Kraft now is playing the you know we can go elsewhere card. He told a group at a public hearing in Everett. “We’ve had people outside of Massachusetts trying to get us to move the team, but we want to be here in this state and do something really cool and creative.” Kraft wants to build a 25-thousand seat venue on a 43-acre piece of property that sits in Boston and in Everett along the Mystic River that houses a shuttered power plant. Massachusetts lawmakers have given an initial approval to the project but there is a long way to go.
Kraft has been looking for a soccer-only stadium in the Boston area for more than 18 years. In 2007, Kraft’s MLS business wanted to get a stadium built in Somerville but nothing came of that. Two years later Kraft looked at Somerville again but nothing happened. In 2014, Kraft wanted a stadium in South Boston. Nothing happened. Kraft eyed Dorchester in 2017 but negotiations to build a stadium fell through. In November 2017, Kraft’s son Jonathan, who is the president of the Kraft Group said, “we’re as optimistic as we’ve ever been that in 2018, we will have a piece of land that is in downtown Boston and we will be able to build a home for the Revolution on it.” That never happened. In 2022, Kraft started targeting Everett as a site for his soccer business. The process of getting the land needed for the soccer stadium continues.
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