Friday, March 12, 2010

Stadium Saga Continues

It has been a while, but the Olympics got in the way of regular posting. Things will be sparse for the next week and then should pick up after that.

The Spec has been reporting on a group of local business men proposing other sites for the main stadium. Frankly the locations are a little insane. Lafarge Canada? Really? Sure a bunch of people will drive by it, but everyone who actually goes to a game will know that yes, Hamilton has a lot of heavy industry. I haven't been by that area in a while, but from what I can remember, there's not a lot of places nearby if you want food or drink, preceding or after the game. Maybe for the Cats, that's a feature not a bug. Plus what will be the remediation on a slag site?

The old Studebaker plant? Better than Lafarge, but pretty hard by Bunge. I like the smell of crushed soybeans, but I'm not sure everyone attending will. Maybe the smell will give the Cats some sort of strange chemical home advantage.

Confederation still gets bandied around. I've mentioned the fact that a lot of CFL teams end up staying in hotels in Burlington. Obviously, with the Confederation Park scenario, that will always happen. Plus no spinoff benefits, because nothing else will be built around it. Certainly no spinoff benefits for Ward 2.

The private business people wouldn't be interested if there wasn't public money, included a huge amount from the City's future fund. At this point, if it isn't going to be West Harbour, the city should just forget the Pan Am funding and use some of the future fund to renovate Ivor Wynne and wait to try again for the Commonwealth games in the 2030 centenial year. A long way off, but that's Hamilton for you.

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