Raise the Hammer

HamiltonFan,

Rather than spend all this money on a stadium for a couple of Grey Cups over a 10 year period, here are some more questions for us to consider.

What if we took the $60 million from the Future Fund and bought $60 million dollars worth of real estate in the core? The Royal Connaught, old Federal Building, Stelco Tower, some or all of the buildings that line Gore Park? All of them?

What if the city allocated $40 million to refurbish as many of them as $40 million would permit? What if they turned around and sold them to the highest bidder? What if we implemented the well-considered Gore Master Plan to enhance our real estate holdings?

Or better still, what if they went into partnership with some real developers, versus the bunch of speculators who only have enough money to buy properties but never enough to develop them?

What if we could get the Province to invest $25 million in the scheme? What if we took the lead in kick-starting development partnerships that weren't based on hand outs, but rather on a reasonable ROI for investors?

What if we paid a true rainmaker (rather than a naive bureaucrat who may be good on process but who lacks vision and deal making savvy) and paid him or her either a flat fee and/or a bonus based on re-sale price of refurbished real estate?

What if we took the profits of such a venture and plowed every single nickel of those profits into soil remediation on the West Harbour site? What if we then put together a consortium of developers who bought into a master plan for the West Harbour lands that the citizens of Hamilton now own, that allowed them to make a fair return while at the same time helping us to build something more than a generic, and mostly lights-out office building on a premier site overlooking our remarkable harbour?

What if we told the Ti-Cats that they are holding the people of Hamilton back from creating the kind of Hamilton many of us can see? (the kind of city AntiProgress says he/she can see)

What if we started to think bold thoughts instead of insipid ones?

What if?