More Ticat Staidum Stuff

The Spec has a couple of articles in the Spec today about the new stadium. I posted the following first (slightly edited) in the Skyscraper Forum Hamilton section (which I highly recommend):

OK, the Cats have finally produced some numbers and they are somewhat interesting. I had heard previously that it costs around $14 million to run a CFL team so $17 million seems plausible on the surface, but I think is overestimating inflation. 4.5% increases for four years? Where is that coming from? The salary cap has been stuck at just over $4 million for years now and I am pretty sure the increase of the cap will be negligible for the next four years (and there is rumours the Cats haven't been spending up to the cap anyways). So for the other $10 million to reach 4.5% total, you're looking at 5% or 5.5% increases. This I find hard to believe. Are the Cats giving their office staff 5.5% increases over the next four years? Somehow I doubt that.

But the real interesting info is that Cats are saying the West Harbour option will only be 20,000 seats. It seems to me the real complaint is not that there are parking problems per se, but that the Cats don't want to contribute any appreciable amount of money.

I suppose with Confederation Park, pretty much every person will go there by car (really green!) and will have to pay for parking at probably $10 per car. For 8,000 cars and 10.5 games per year (nine regular, one preseason, 0.5 playoff games per year) that is $840,000 a year maybe, that justifies the Cats putting in a big chunk of coin.

So basically everything seems to be coming down to parking. For the Cats, the fact everyone has to drive is a feature not a bug.