Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Ticats Stadium, West Harbour versus East Mountain

I should comment on the Spec story about the two locations that came out of the facilitation process. I've already gone on and on about the West Harbour, but the East Mountain location, up at Pritchard is new. Obviously, I'm not a fan of it either, although I'm mildly more in favour of it than Confederation Park. From a regional transit standpoint, it is a disaster. Compared to West Harbour, where GO train service is going to be extended to Liuna Station, there's pretty much nothing. One could catch the GO bus from Toronto and then take a bus up the Mountain, but that's a pretty long journey and not really practical. From Mississauga, Oakville or Burlington, one could take the GO train to Liuna, take a bus to Gore Park and then more buses. Even less practical. Who knows what the price of gas will be in 2015 and beyond? What will traffic be like on the QEW and 403 in 2015 and beyond? Compared to Confederation Park, where currently regular service consists of buses on Saturdays and Sundays in the summer there is regular service. Although I can say as someone who grew up on the East Mountain, the HSR isn't orientated towards getting people from all across the city to the southern part of the East Mountain.

I concede that the Cats will get considerably more revenue from parking at this site, maybe close to a million a year. Because nobody will take public transit there.

Basically this site does the bare minimum for Hamilton. It keeps the Cats here, but does almost nothing else for the city. It is far from city hotels (although if Mercanti actually builds his hotel on Stonechurch that's something) and restaurants save for the chains in the power centre nearby.

The focus on "driveway to driveway" makes me wonder if we're still in the seventies. Where else in North America are people still building stadiums on the outskirts of town?

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