Raise the Hammer

JonC

I agree, though telecommuting is not yet the trend envisioned, but this spread will not happen in the way that it did before: sprawl into small-town suburbs. That has already happened, is still happening even as the current trend is for people to move back into urban spaces, a trend in which Hamilton no longer has an inherent advantage over former towns like Burlington and Oakville which are are busily acquiring and building the assets of denser, urban communities; witness Burlington's Performing Arts Centre.

This is not to say that Hamilton has no distinctive qualities that can and will appeal to people's tastes, but we cannot rely on past size or industrial heft to determine people's choices. Toronto has won the race to be the centre of this larger urban state, being the seat of government, finance and media. All roads, literally, lead to Front & Yonge, Bay, University and so central TO gets the big sports teams, the big theatre, the big shopping districts, the big concerts. It is downtown South Ont. and that's where our commercial heft resides. Hamilton is now one of several outlying urban centres that must compete first on the basis of the quality of life its communities provide local residents and only secondarily on specialty attractions for out-of-towners. People now want to live in good communities with good access to big attractions.

Put another way, I support Bratina's boosterism for a central Hamilton Pan Am games stadium, but any Burlington location along the QEW/GO corridor has an access advantage for a broadly distributed series of events (and Burlington probably has more hotel space too.) Neither city has local public rapid transit at the moment. All the recommended Hamilton locations have one or the other of immediate highway or GO access. If we want this thing we have to come with our A game. We can't just dismiss the competition and rely on history. I mean, really, most Hamiltonians could probably get to Waterdown & Plains road as fast than they could to a field out by the airport!

Put another way, in the long term this stadium will never host the very biggest entertainment attractions. I believe the CFL is a superior product and Bob Young has provided good stable ownership worthy of success, but you can build a football Taj Mahal in Hamilton and it will sit empty the minute if/when an NFL team arrives in Toronto. If one never arrives, the TiCats will at best take a dozen dates annually. The rest of the time the stadium will have to serve local, community needs- amateur sports, trade shows, etc. Things that enrich the lives of residents. We might get the Stones, but it'll be the Electric Scooter Tour.