Hamilton stadium lawsuit officially settled clearing way for Grey Cup bid
"This resolution concludes on a positive note a chapter in the city's history."
Fred Eisenberger, Hamilton Mayor
Good read here
Drew Edwards?Verified account
[ltr]@scratchingpost[/ltr]
4m4 minutes ago
Drew Edwards Retweeted 3DownNation
Mitchell says he isn't sure the #Ticats and the city can pull it together for a 2020 Grey Cup bid. But he didn't say no, either.
So 2020 is the next available one? 24 years inthe making, should be a great party!
Priority 1: Get Hamilton back in the Grey Cup.
Priority 2: Get the Grey Cup back in Hamilton.
Looks right to me.
Tax payers at city and provincial levels shut out on details. And they wonder why we're cynical.
Not really a surprise. Virtually all lawsuit settlements contain a confidentiality clause. Not sure why you would think you're entitled to know those details when you're not a party to the action.
As taxpayers I think we are party to the action. I don’t understand the secrecy unless it’ll cause controversy for our illustrious councillors. It is an election year for those Bozos.
Nope. The actual party to the action would be the Corporation of the City of Hamilton.
These details are kept confidential because people tend to equate monetary damages with guilt, which isn't necessarily true.
I’m not interested in guilt but I am interested in $$ coming to taxpayers. I’m sceptical about the “will not cost taxpayers? statement.
This whole debacle with the Infrastructure Ontario/Metrolinx will be repeated again with the LRT and we need to be privy to this potential $1Billion fiasco. There will be lawsuits guaranteed and we don’t need secret settlements because our government is inept in negotiating, managing and enforcing contracts. If it’s tsken 3+ years for a $150Million project to be settled can you imagine how long litigation will take for LRT?
Show us a summary of the settlement. I want to see how much the construction companies involved paid out because of their errors/mismanagement.
I understand how you feel, but that's not the way things are done in the legal world.
If you feel that city council has mismanaged this thing, the only recourse is to vote them out.
“If you feel that city council has mismanaged this thing, the only recourse is to vote them out.?
I’ve tried for the last four elections. Everyone else keeps voting the incumbent back in.
Years ago I move from Hamilton into the suburbs to get away from Hamilton politics and then .....wham....amalgamation!! Right back into the BS.
Just my luck....
And no...I’m too old to now take a run at council.
This was the Cats suing the contractors, no? Or, the contractors were 'third partied' by some government infrastructure corp.? Tough to make private entities divulge their settlements. I would agree that they are entitled to privacy. If a government, at any level, entered into a settlement, your darn right the taxpayers should be entitled to know what was paid or received.
Also, if some Ontario government corp. was a payor, there is no way that a settlement "will not cost taxpayers." Remember, governments don't make $ they only take $$.
The real question is do we wait until after LRT is built to host the grey cup. It's too late to host one before construction starts (if it does in fact start) in 2019. So 2023 would be the earliest if we want to avoid hosting during LRT construction. I personally think it's worth the wait, although I'm frustrated that it had to take this long in the first place.
Remember that Hamilton waits for white knight business to come in and "save the day" rather than be proactive and strike deals from the outset with a proactive "win-win" type deal. So Hamilton is "reactive" in this sense and will wait to commit to much on something like a Grey Cup where there is risk for the city. It's just a different mentality in Hamilton and will take more work.
Great news. First significant post pan am move to the stadium precinct. The anarchist group the tower is moving to lottridge and barton. Same building as the site of a murder last year. Maybe Caretaker can buy it and get rid of the whole place.
But I think the Dairy Queen is open now.
DQ wont be open Grey Cup time Hendy. Maybe the anarchists can serve up a pot luck.
For those that complain about THF!
BRODBECK: Province, U of M write off more than $100M in Investors Group Field debt
Which means what many suspected all along is now official: taxpayers will be paying for the lion’s share of the cost of the football stadium, but they won’t own any part of it.
According to the U of M’s 2018 annual report, the university is writing down $118.7 million from the first phase of the stadium loan. The original $160-million loan is broken down into two parts – an $85 million loan the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are expected to repay and a $75 million loan that was supposed to be repaid through property tax revenue from the former stadium site at Polo Park. Repayment of the latter loan, which has grown to $118.7 million due to unpaid interest charges, is the one being written off.
“At this time there is no realistic prospect for Manitobans to be reimbursed for the amount the NDP promised they would receive in return for the loans,? said Friesen.
The real tragedy for the province now is even though they covered the majority of the cost of the stadium, not only through a loan that will never be repaid but also through grants, they don’t own any part of the facility. It’s owned by Triple B Stadium. The province is one of four stakeholders in the consortium that makes up Triple B, which includes the city, the U of M and the Bombers. But the province doesn’t own the asset in whole or in part.
Taxpayers paid for most of the stadium, but they don’t own it. It’s not a public building.
To make matters worse, because construction of the stadium was rushed, there are now over $30 million of repairs required to the facility, which is being financed through even more borrowing. The province, under the NDP, guaranteed up to $35.3 million of indebtedness to make the repairs. As at March 31, 2017, the amount guaranteed by the province was $17 million. No one knows who will ultimately pay that bill since Triple B and the stadium contractors remain in a legal battle over who is responsible for the added costs.
It’s a mess.
Wow. THF's problems pale in comparison to that. IIRC, they had huge issues with leaks & drainage. Thankfully, we didn't have to deal with that.