pertaining to incompetent leaders

[url]Winnipeg Free Press

^This article should be taken very seriously. It is a code of ethics, that many ignorant to it have no idea of.

good one say no to asper!!!!Ledehoski's proposal was better and he doesn't want to own OUR TEAM!

heres the thing UPA, aspers point douglas design is a dam good idea, and the board of directors from the club signed the agreement to be loyal to aspers design. it wasn;t a long time ago that a bunch of proposals were made. If Ledehoski made one or wanted to that was his chance.

See, here's another thing. . . what if people took a different approach in reading the article? I doubt what you induced from UPA's post has anything to do with what he's getting at.

iunno what exactly your talking about big. I agree with the article and the fact that the mts centre was funded largely by the public sector and had next to no information on its actual funding. and agree that the same thing for the football stadium but asper has been alot more open abot it and has shown much more willingness to spend his own money to do so and has gaurenteed to pay back the public fundings within 5 years.

all i am saying about UPAs post is that at the time aspers proposal was choosen, mulitple proposals were made and were looked at. he states ledehoski doesnt want to own our team. i was making my point at that statment by him.

my apologies. that's the most i can offer.

= = == = = =

in my opinion the mts centre is by and large the worst issue of incomptence i can equate, notwithstanding the article as it stands on its own merit. That being said, as a canadian born and raised in winnipeg, my own opinion has little edge, seeing I am biased (admittedly) to saving the now raped/pillaged eaton's building done by none other than Mark Chipman, Glen Murray, and Gary Doer.

The article only provides just how "risk free" the government can milk it's consumer as a tax-paying entity? What that question concerns me as a citizen is the government of manitoba, will on account of provincial litigation treat it's citizen as part of an ENTERPRISE WHICH WE ARE NOT. In fact, Mark Chipman (as it stated in the article. . . ) is a piece of the monopoly which goes something like, "I am a citizen for the tax-payer in this community, who will wager all the money invested into this (True North Corp.)and do solemnly swear to honor all prevailing monetary costs allocated into my PRIVATE BUSINESS - LOL -!!!) In the larger scheme of things Mark Chipman acted as the alibi in terms of a government loop hole - (an enterprise) - made up of frailty (i.e. joe-taxpayer.)" This is based on the condition I propose that the government of manitoba singlehandedly maneuvered without any recourse of action to legitimately inform the public of it's wrong-doing.

^This is the crux of the article, which based on formality, is telling us that the wool was being pulled over our eyes without it being questioned. Not only were we played for as tax-paying entities; but the average citizen were left blinded by the government. This is to say: the government knowlingly deceived it's main investor (the public monetary interest) into an illigitimate partnership through True North as if it is legally binding enough to withstand the peril of public opinions resolve.

Cont.

Also, it is in my opinion the government of Canada (YES. . . CANADA) failed not only the citizens of winnipeg but in large part the legal aspect of demolishing of the former Eaton's building. . . is without a doubt a crime that has gone unforseen due to the incredible loss of such an important piece of history. The reason being, that in an age such as this, Canada is less than a 200 year old nation, yet, to let Eatons go unpreserved, unprenounced and unwanted speaks volumes for the lack of vision or intiative. It was a shame to watch it happen and feel powerless because of it.

Any winnipegger or Canadian across the nation should be ashamed not knowing how significant a crime this was. People are completely clueless as to those that say, "It was necessary for downtown." Completely and utterly ignorant to standards that accompany it.

thank you,

bigc.

P.S. If this article doesn't make sense to you, or the impertinence of Mark Chipman, Glen Murray and True North. . . think again. Sam Katz wants to make his name something to be remembered, yet he flip flops on a stadium for point douglas.

all is well big. And just a point on Katz with point douglas stadium design. he is in a tight spot really. with him and apser running can-west as direct buisness partners. asper is expecting him to be on his side, while katz has to be reliable for bettering the city. and although i personally think the design is a fantastic idea i also have limited knowledge of all aspects.

but i agree the sam katz flip flops decisions has to me he runs the city more like a buisness then a city.

The sweetheart part of the deal for the private owners is that they are guaranteed these subsidies for 25 years whether they need them or not.

[i]So, before the first dollar of rent is collected for any event, a minimum of $3.7 million in income every year for 25 years, comes from the province and city.

Remember that $60 million mortgage? It is, not coincidentally, amortized over 25 years. A garden variety mortgage with blended payments including interest at six per cent per annum over that period of time would need about $4.6 million per year to fully service.[/i]

This is what constructive joe-taxpayer has been rewarded. True North and its subsidiary investors are reaping the profit margins, for an arena that is essentially being paid for BUT NOT OWNED by the public sector. In truth, True North is being BOUGHT A BUILDING FROM WINNIPEG PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME. . . for FREE!!! In fact, Winnipeggers MUST ENJOY hiding in their fox-holes so much that it makes True North look a lot better getting filthy rich.

If this above paragraph eludes the average citizen of this city, you will begin to understand how Eaton's did not have to be demolished.

Sadly this is all just academic.

Everything, Eaton's itself, having stood up until past 2000a.d. deserved a better fate, but not ONE civil servant risked breeching something so totally unavoidable? It is absolutely mind boggling how a country such as ours just let this happen the way it has.

This is divisive of Sam Katz extrodinary cowardice on the same type of issue.

The fact(s)

1- Eaton's = destroyed
2- Canada has no sense of soveriegty that it allows it's tax-payers to have our eyes gouged out (follows. . .)
3- True North inexplicably (as the Bombers sorry excuse for a football team) have a building built for them FOR FREE - (follows)
4- Mark Chipman's associates keep 100% of the profits.

[i]The True North project cost taxpayers $40.5 million up-front and taxpayers are committed to subsidies and tax concessions of about $5 million a year for 25 years, or another $125 million over time.

The private owners put $18 million and made no commitment to make further investments if the project should turn sour, but they get all of the profit. [/i]

Unbelievable to me is that not 1 Winnipegger I know, even cares that the profit Mark Chipman is making off of this can feed our children and our childrens children all because of the the MTS Centre built for True North.

And nobody cares.

Unbelievable, even as I write this. The Eaton's building was a waste.

It's a sad day when someone from a town where the tallest building is a grain silo has to explain that Winnipeg taxpayers are getting the screw for Mayor Sam Katz's Jewish Land Developer of the Year award.

Mayor Katz shared co-honours of the first award with the Asper family for Canwest Global Park. Next year's award went to David Chipman for True North. This year's award goes to David Asper for the new Bomber Stadium with added bonuses of our community-owned football team and the old Polo Park site worth millions of dollars.

Next year it will be a water park. The year after will be an expansion of the Convention Centre. Winnipeg has become a MONOPOLY BOARD with Jewish land developers given "Carte Blanche" to cover the city's prime real estate with their sports complexes and hotels.

edited - inappropriate

I respect that post as well 99, even if I have to stand alone to 'respect' it.

The thing about what we're getting from all of this, is that Eaton's had to be saved, but everything was done to ensure it wouldn't stop the MTS centre from being built. It wasn't anyone's fault but the perpurtrators that absolved every effort to unilaterally oppose the project.

How this makes sense to us in real time; will tell us how point douglas is a canon shot away from going up in smoke. Unless the population really gets together, acts through due diligence, then and only then will the message get through. "Don't screw us or we'll screw you."

Asper won't lose his battle as long as he gets the exact same footage that Mark Chipman's true north corp. as it stood gains monetary return.

The moral of the story is simple: Eaton's should never have been salvaged, it should have been preserved, the government totally dropped a bomb on it and there is no turning back now. Eaton's is not a reason to stop the stadium from being built; but it's a lesson to consider how we were blind-sided.

lol

you make it sound like this sort of thing happens only in Winnipeg, when in fact it is the basic premise that drives greed and corruption in our society, otherwise known as politics.

The Feds, Province and City will give you anything you want, as long you are prepared to build “it” in an otherwise area known as a slum, ghetto, whatever name they are using now.

I’m sure if you asked the surrounding business owners and homeowners (those not evicted) if their profits and quality of life have improved, the answer would be a resounding YES.

Why else would any sane investor, locate to such an area, when there is plenty of cheap land just outside the perimeter. Better yet, Ledo (Ledohoski) how those plans at the Downs are coming along. :roll:

Allow me to be honest with you, before jumping to conclusions if for a moment you believe our civic politicians would do anything to have saved face over the mts centre, thus protecting the Eaton's building from kingdom-come. Therefore, then the taboo of politicians "are all corrupt" is true.

I think, if more people thought about what's NOT being done, at least one political voice could have changed the outcome.

My point was this: where else in this country is there a landmark such as eaton's?? I would tell you that there are probably no chance of finding it. By historical (cnd.) standards, it is not a far fetched argument to make that eaton's (again. . . by cnd. standards) is equivilant to the Taj-Mahal. It is inexcusable to me, that a country so short in existence completely absent minded of what this building represented exactly? Into this short millenium, you would think the government even in it's short period compared to other nations, would have thought something. They didn't. . . it's unbelievable to me.

That being said, if you consider how intellectually dishonest political leaders are then knock yourself out. People of that sophistication have fallen off the evolutionary scale perhaps. It doesn't mean the brain seizes to work.

As much as cartel economics sickens me, the Eaton's saga makes me want to blow chunks. In Eaton's dying days, the billionaire Eaton family had the audacity to send these heartstring-tugging letters to seniors who had long retired from Eaton's which begged them to help the dying retail giant by sending in as much of their pensions as they could spare. This level of greed and depravity is subhuman.

When I hear the name Eaton, I want to go to an Eaton family gathering, take the head of this brood and gut him like a salmon in front of his family while they curiously watch their patriarch flop around the floor.

As for the Eaton's building, if it wasn't for the asbestos embedded throughout the building, I would have led the campaign to 9/11 Eaton's straight to hell. :twisted:

I feel that.^

What baffles me is how True North thinks they can afford an NHL team. With a 150mil dollar arena, the purchase of a team is app. 175mil. Couple that with a 50mil cap budget just to compete.

quick math:

15000 x 90$avg. per seat= 1,125 000mil

1,125 000 x 40game season= 45, 000 000mil
= = == = = = =

If the c.e.o. mark chipman leads an ad hoc attempt to the table (as the ever so insightful WFP randy turner suggests have 'secret council meetings with the NHL.'. . .) the mts centre 15,000 sold out seats at 90$_!! a seat.

I'm accounting luxury boxes in the 90$ avg per seat, ergo, even if each seat were a bottom feeding 50$_per game, per seat, hypothetically the 90$ range is a good average. (i.e. educated guess)

Without concessions/parking, revenue sharing (a must), or profits from sales, chipman is telling us he'll clear 45mil in ticket sales alone.

This follows. . .

linear pattern of logic, that cheap skates will bow to chimpans idealized godzilla wearing suit made of crackerjack sized boxes. Do you see the oxymoron yet??

(this follows. . .)

= = = == = = = =

If pessimism isn't your skeptical domain, let's consider chipman's investment were to become reality, he has generated a fan base that brings a total of $45mil per year in ticket sales alone - which covers the cost of putting a competing team on the ice. Any profit that True North makes is based on concerts as well as the NHL teams proxy. This means tv revenues which make up the lions share of Canadian markets, double Chipman's chances of turning the NHL into a profitable_wpg_based_market. That is the question?
Yes, yes it is.

(this follows. . .)
= = = = == = =
with or without a 45mil 'exit strategy' of 15,000 seats per game to cover the cost certainty of player salaries. Chimpman thinks True North can assure any losses based on the fact the arena is being paid for by the tax-payer which acts as collateral. This also means anything Chipman believes True North corp. can afford to purchase (as buy into an NHL_wpg sized market), is covered by the %100 profit margin True North achieves per annuum, without any compensation toward the monetary public (taxpayer).

(this follows. . . )
= = = = = == = =

True North seriously believing the NHL has any interest in moving to wpg, because the capital$_$formula is here. . .

A fan base brand of former jet loyalists that will unquivocally sell out the building for at least a 5-10 year minuimum at 60-100$ per game.

Quebec City is what, 400 years old this year ?

Somehow, a dilapidated department store in Winnipeg, is hard to imagine as a Taj-Mahal. Except maybe if your a rat or a roach.

What this means is that the actual cash invested in [i]the arena was $58.5 million, of which $40.5 million, or 69.2 per cent came from the taxpayers and $18 million, or 30.8 per cent came from the private owners.[/i] So, really, the people who get all of the profit and have all of the control of the arena put up less than a third of the capital invested, and, as already noted, only 15 per cent of the total cost.

Put another way, for every $1 invested by the private owners, they got an immediate gift from the taxpayers of $2.25 of equity. That’s right. On Day 1 they tripled their money with more to come.


^This (in italics.) =

If it had been built on a vacant site already owned by the government, you could subtract from that the $3 million or so that it cost to tear down the Eaton's building.

For those of you doing the math, the actual share of the cost of the arena funded by the people who are reaping 100 per cent of the profits is less than 15 per cent (19 per cent if you accept that the Eaton’s site, with the empty building still on it, was worth $5 million and not the nominal amount declared for land transfer tax purposes).


It should make you wonder how True North, Glenn Murray, or Gary Doer totally steamrolled the issue. In retrospect anything we were allowed to have knowledge of THEN in clear hindsite, factuality would have certainly played an important role, pigseye.

If you think this information wasn’t present at the time True North formed it’s anti-coup against the government forces behind this project, NOW our participation of any future stadium being built will have equal amount of support. The difference being that this time, the truth will be had rather than purged upon by True North, the government which completely underminded the process of it’s citizens as a part of our better understanding.

Any losses incurred by True North, so long the NHL were to put a blanket over the feasability of a successful NOT mediocre wpg_market?

The answer(s) are simply in the magical_recipe provided to True North by you the citizen of Winnipeg.

According to the Term Sheet and other information prepared by government authorities at the time the deal was done, the [i]private owners of the True North arena were to receive direct subsidies of at least $1.5 million annually from VLT revenues, of which at least $1.125 million represents the foregone share that ordinarily would go to the provincial government. [/i]

The $1.5 million, remember, is a projected minimum. True North, or its assignee, gets 75 per cent, or $3 million, of the first $4 million of the revenue generated by its 50 VLTs. After $4 million they get the usual 20 per cent.

In addition, it was estimated at the time that another $2.2 million would go to the owners of the arena annually out of business and entertainment taxes that otherwise would be collected and kept by the city.

So, before the first dollar of rent is collected for any event, a minimum of $3.7 million in income every year for 25 years, comes from the province and city.


This^ is the total cost of the mts centre for True North, or in other words, a hand is kept in your pocket while the potential for an NHL franchise were it to be hatched.

This is important information, if you THINK about it, only because a plot to exercise any capital interest in a future NHL team does not rest on the the city. . . the NHL would have to be convinced it can squeeze the life out of it’s investors.

If True North were to run the NHL in mts centre, the projected 5-10 year period of %100_capacity might break even through expenses (i.e.player salaries) depending on profits its allocated. The point being, if True North were to place half the costs from %50_capacity in mts centre, Mark Chipman may not benefit from the deal given to him by the government, nor would the NHL be willing to participate.

In a successful mts centre, Mark Chipman’s NHL team would have to break even by covering all the costs, at %100 capacity, but would not be able to turn a profit at 60-75% capacity. The state of that happening would entail cutting loss.

Remember that $60 million mortgage? It is, not coincidentally, amortized over 25 years. A garden variety mortgage with blended payments including interest at six per cent per annum over that period of time would need about $4.6 million per year to fully service.

Still, in 2008, the total property tax saving will come to more than $1.1 million. There’s the other 20 per cent of the mortgage payment, and then some.

I want the Canadian teams to bail on the NHL and start a Canadian league, like the Russians are now doing. Hockey was better when each country had its own pro league and junior system who learned the style of their pros.

After Bettman took over, the NHL became a Borg Cube that assimilated all the countries best pros and destroyed the developmental systems in other countries. Now we have teams in the sunbelt and places where they don't know how to make ice.

btw, did you notice that when Russia won the world hockey championship against Canada that they played the old USSR national anthem? That was cool--Cold War Cool!

P.S. I realize the Eaton's building could've been salvaged by putting in mall shops food court and living quarters on some floors. That building had a lot of sentimental value--even to me. It's the Eaton family I have no affection for, as you might have read earlier.

I know just how you feel.

This is actually about True North, in the same manner that they've pursued a pompous attitude the same way Winnipeg Enterprises ran in the former Winnipeg Arena.

There is no way Chipman can accomodate enough corporate sponsership with a lion-share. The profits to do so would be too ambitious, even by True North's standards.

I suppose if you've read how I think chipman, in my opinion, promises to fund a wpg_nhl_market. . . promises are made to be borken. I guarantee you (. . .in my original response to '99') that my dissertation of True North's quasi-proposal is bang on the metro-scope.

With everything going at a full proof cycle, the profitability of a wpg_nhl_market would be very challeneging to say the least.

(this follows. . .)
= = = == = = =

why eaton's was a big mistake, but it'd be even bigger if the average citizen of winnipeg weren't educated enough to see how the bureaucractic element may surprise the few. Maybe just enough to feud with Chipman's rainbow-esque True North concept. You will quickly find chipman loves his photo-ops.

That way things could be done much-much better.