West Harbour is Dead, Long Live Longwood!

So council has apparently voted 13-2 in favour of pursuing the new stadium at the Longwood and Aberdeen site. Whether the city can make a deal with Mac is a bit up in the air. The city has land to trade, plus the medical centre Mac wanted to build in the MIP (McMaster Innovation Park) was never a good fit for that location, so maybe the city can find a better site for it closer to downtown. The city has had problems dealing with Mac lately so who knows. With the city and the Ticats on board, plus assumedly the province and the feds who I'm sure wish this would just go away maybe there's a deal to be made.

I'm still not convinced that the deal is that great for the Ticats compared to West Harbour, but they do, so I guess that's what's important. One thing I hope comes out of this is a focus on getting the West Harbour remediated. Judging by the time it has taken for the Lister Block or Randle Reef to be addressed, I'm afraid it is going to be a long wait, even with concrete plans. One of the benefits of putting the stadium at the West Harbour, from the city's perspective is that with the tight timeline things would start moving quickly.

In football news, last year's CFL sack leader, Ricky Foley has been released by the Seattle Seahawks. With BC last year, he's a free agent and obviously will draw some interest as a non-import rush end. Should the Cats go after him? Good question. The Cats defensive line has been decent, although not stellar and Foley would be an improvement, at least in terms of ratio. Starting him and Matt Kirk on the line would be pretty sweet. However the Cats have been burnt by midseason NFL signings in the past (see Keith, Kenton), so maybe they're a little gunshy. Whoever signs Foley will have to have some cap room. I'm sure BC will make a run at resigning him, although a team with a single win probably won't make the playoffs if that's a concern for Foley. Historically the Argos would be in there. Speaking of history, the Cats have been rumoured to have cap room every season, so maybe they could win the bidding war and frontload the contract this year so the next two seasons wouldn't have as big a cap hit.

No Real Stadium at West Harbour

It just goes on and on. According to the Spec, the Pan Am Games organizers are now only willing to pay for a 5000 to 7000 seat stadium on West Harbour. Obviously that becomes more difficult for the council to support. Is Aberdeen and Longwood still a possibility? Who knows. At this point I wish the Pan Am games had never come along. Everyone would be pumped about the season and hopefully the Cats would have a decent year revenue wise at Ivor Wynne. I'm curious to see if the Labour Day game will sell out. Without the Pan Am debacle, I'm almost positive it would, but now with a lot of resentment to the Ticats lingering, I'm not sure they can fill it up.

West Harbour Lives!

Well maybe anyways. According to this Spec article, the owner (Marino Rakovac) of a property in the vicinity of the proposed stadium has a grand plan for condos and stuff at the West Harbour site. I believe there may have been a Paul Wilson column on this individual a while ago, but I'm too lazy to look for it. Cheers to Ward 2 councilor Bob Bratina for asking for consideration.

I do love the quote from Scott Mitchell though:

"This is the first we've heard about it, and any business that has any credibility whatsoever would have contacted us previous to this."

Mitchell said the new plans don't change the football club's stance on the west harbour.

"I think it begs the question, after these shenanigans continue to go on, of 'Who is benefiting from these developments in the west harbour?,'" he said.

That's pretty rich coming from him. Who's benefiting from the developments on the East Mountain? Osmington perhaps?

Dunnigan Trafalis Man Crush Watch

In a hopefully continuing feature, Tigercatatonia documents the man crush TSN commentator Matt Dunnigan has on Ticat third string quarterback Adam Trafralis.

"Hamilton in 2009; it was Quinton Porter, Kevin Glenn and Adam Tafralis. In 2010, things changed slightly to look like this - Glenn, Porter and Tafralis, and I would not be surprised to see Tafralis leap frog Porter by the end of the year. That's just me folks, but I'm just saying."

The corollary is of course, Dunnigan's dislike for Porter. Which brings up a potential question, what happens Glennwise if the Cats lose the next two games against Montreal and Saskatchewan on the road? The Cats are nine point underdogs currently on the road against the Alouettes which seems perhaps a bit high. Depends on how Glenn plays one would think.

Here's a good story in the Spec by columnist Paul Wilson on the stadium site issue. I still think that council will end up going with East Mountain site. It is tough for the West Harbour site when the ward councilor Bob Bratina is himself against the location plus all the suburban councilor votes. I'm glad to see people speaking up and getting organized against the East Mountain site, but as I said, getting the councilors to go against Bob Young's $15 million will be difficult.

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?

Ticats Hamilton Grey Cup in 2013?

I posted a couple of days ago about trying to get the Grey Cup in 2014 for the last season of Ivor Wynne. Now there's a story in the Spec about the Cats and the city trying for the Grey Cup in 2013, using the new stadium. There's several surprising things about this. First that the year would be 2013, which I assumed the stadium would not be finished by, especially considering it is June 2010 and the city and the Ticats are still bickering over a suitable stadium site. The other is holding it in the new stadium itself, which by itself would be quite small for the Grey Cup. Assuming the Cats somehow get a 25,000 seat stadium with open ends, the Cats could probably add bleachers at both end zones although getting above 40,000 might be difficult. Conceivably the stadium could be built such that adding extra bleachers for special events like the Grey Cup is an easier undertaking. I still think holding one last Grey Cup in Ivor Wynne is worth exploring, although the stadium may now be so decrepit, adding seats would more difficult than in 1996.

One issue that the Grey Cup brings up is obviously where is the hell is the stadium going to go? I've harped about this idea in the past, but putting a stadium in Confederation Park vastly increases the likelihood that visitors using the facility would stay in Burlington hotels rather than ones in downtown Hamilton. Not a huge deal for regular season games, but for a Grey Cup and a depressed Hamilton hotel market as it is, that's a lot less benefit for the city. I'm away next week, but maybe the week after I'll test drive going from a Burlington hotel to Confederation Park versus going from the Sheraton in Jackson Square. I'm guessing Burlington will end up a much shorter journey. What's the point of having a Grey Cup in Hamilton if Burlington slurps up all the benefits?

So with a Confederation Park site, the city could host a Grey Cup, try and arrange events downtown in the preceding week, but have a much more difficult time of it. Conversely a west harbour site is reasonably close to Hess Village. Maybe the possibility of making some money off a 2013 Grey Cup could help the Cats to agreeing to the west harbour.