Raise the Hammer

Brian - Burlington was originally planning to build a 2,000 seat soccer facility with 10,000 temporary seats at Spencer Smith Park (which is right next door to Appleby GO station).

The community nearby rallied against it, and the city caved and settled on the New City Park location near the escarpment.

This was a very poor choice of location, tucked in the far corner of a residential area of the city (basically east Waterdown) with no bus or train access whatsoever. Not an ideal location at all for a high profile event.

The NEC at first reneged, saying the stadium would be disruptive of the escarpment. The city then reduced the temporary seating to 5,000 to bring the NEC on side with it, which brings us to where we are today.

So now it seems HostCo is going to be looking for another place to hold soccer matches. I would expect that yes, HostCo is including GO access as a major factor in this decision, in addition to the legacy aspects. From where I sit, only the Aldershot location or potentially, Confederation Park, seems to fit what both HostCo and the Ti-Cats are looking for today.

However there's no way that the Cats are going to be able to put up the cash if the municipal government and/or a development partner are not stepping forward with in total somewhere near $80 million.

So they figure that Burlington wants to be part of the games, and some councillors in Burlington are looking to get more development in the Aldershot area.

Problem is, Burlington has a much smaller tax base, and council is iup to their ears in complaints from citizens about the misnamaged pier project, the performing arts centre which some see as a luxury, and the general trend in tax rates as the city reaches full build-out of its urban boundary. There's zero appetite from the city to spend the kind of money on a stadium that Hamilton is willing to do.

I think the other aspect is, in Aldershot, the team would still be called the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Many Burlingtonians would be aghast at defining themselves as a suburb of Hamilton - the city has worked hard to forge its identity as a city on its own right.