Raise the Hammer

Enjoying that my earlier statement of fact was down-voted without my having endorsed WH or IWS. Reality does suck, I'll admit. Here's a link about the funding numbers and the severance request:

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/253596--velodrome-backers-confident-planning-is-in-high

Without the track facility or the velodrome involved in the WH option, I'm sure that there are any number of surface-parking-heavy options that could be fast-tracked to sweeten the deal for the "major tenant," but I worry that at this stage there is no appetite for anything but cost-saving compromise, which is nothing to build a city on, IMHO. Certainly a problematic cornerstone of waterfront identity.

I tend to agree with Eisenberger, Adames and the NCCH/CCA/ICU (and, elliptically, HostCo) that the velodrome could prove to be the dark horse success of the Games' legacy, and unlike the NCCH I feel that a velodrome would be a good fit for the WH. Regardless of your favoured location, thrift will almost certainly be the undoing of that potential. Hence Troop's admonition that one of three needs that the city's bid must meet includes the velodrome, “which has great potential to provide athletic legacy not just for the country but the entire country,” which to me posits a permanent facility of enduring quality, something that the city has been sitting on its thumbs about since this process began. And yet under a hard-nosed reading of those criteria, it's conceivable that mucking the velodrome up could cost us Pan Am involvement.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/473494--we-have-lots-of-questions-troop
http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/473706--mcguinty-determined-to-get-good-pan-am-result-for-hamilton

Further to the political juice of this bid saga, another link that I present as evidence of either facts or fractious (di)visions even within this legacy components. Feel free to down-vote again, but again I'd contend that the challenges to attaining this dream run deeper than the bottom line dollars and cents.

http://restorecootes.blogspot.com/2010/08/behind-scenes-of-velodrome.html