Raise the Hammer

Lawrence:

Nobody has forced or is forcing football out of Hamilton. The Tiger-Cats already have a 29,000 seat football stadium. They pay a base stadium rent of $27,500 per year which amounts to $0.95 per seat per year. Even though it is an old stadium, the Ticats have a sweet deal unavailable in any other city in Canada.

Hamilton and the Tiger-Cats were synonymous with one another until July, 2010 when the Tiger-Cats cut their own umbilical cord from Hamilton by threatening to move the team out of town. That is when, to many Hamiltonians, the Ticats became just another professional football franchise instead of the community-based team that generations of Hamiltonians had grown deeply fond of. Under duress, Hamilton then sacrificed the main Pan Am athletics stadium and its preferred west harbour location to appease the Tiger-Cats’ demands.

On January 31, 2011, Mayor Bratina and Hamilton city council voted unanimously to spend up to $60.5 Million to demolish its 29,000 seat stadium and replace it with a 22,500 seat stadium on the same site. That was the day that professional football officially prevailed over Hamilton’s city building and amateur sports Pan Am legacy.

Hamilton’s needs and wants seem to have become increasingly irrelevant in the Pan Am stadium process since then.

Please read the Stadium Subcommittee report on their November 16, 2011 meeting. http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/58CE...

Two things stand out in the Stadium Subcommittee report:

1. The Infrastructure Ontario representative would not even disclose to the city subcommittee whether the stadium will be built in an east-west direction or a north-south direction. It is disingenuous of Infrastructure Ontario to claim that this basic design information cannot be release to the City of Hamilton and must remain confidential until the bid process is completed. Aren’t the three construction design bid teams working within the same design parameters? Surely all three bid teams are either designing a north-south stadium or all three are designing a east-west stadium.

2. The City of Hamilton plans to talk with the neighbourhood residents about what they want to see in the stadium precinct.

These two important items should have been addressed by Infrastructure Ontario and the City of Hamilton in advance and contained in a report as part of the RFP sent by Infrastructure Ontario to the three construction design teams in September, 2011. Instead, the basic design and the direction in which the stadium will run is being dictated to the City of Hamilton by Infrastructure Ontario and the city will have to spend the next three years playing catch up.

Ultimately, the long term viability of the new stadium remains the largest issue. Whether we Hamiltonians like it or not, it is highly probable that the new MLSE ownership structure will be the ownership template for a Toronto NFL franchise playing in an 80,000 seat Olympic stadium by 2024. Is Hamilton spending $60.5 Million toward a stadium to host 50 more years of Tiger-Cat football? Or will the new stadium instead host a farewell salute of 15 years or less to a football team that has played here since 1869? If the Ticats fold or move within 15 years of the opening of the new stadium, is it still worth building the stadium to gain a chance to host some Pan Am soccer games, a Grey Cup or two and a few Olympic soccer games between 2014 and 2024? Or would it be of more long-term benefit to Hamilton to pay the breakage fee of perhaps $1 Million to Infrastructure Ontario, spend $15 Million on stadium renovations and the remaining $44.5 Million on waterfront development or LRT or return some of the money to the Future Fund? Mayor Bratina and Hamilton city council and staff need to assess the recent decisions made in Toronto as part of their continuing due diligence on the stadium issue.

Comment edited by RenaissanceWatcher on 2011-12-12 00:24:50