Back then (apart from taxpayer money being used to help millionaires and wealthy corporations build their stadiums) the number one critique of the Skydome was location.
Shoe-horning it in the city where traffic is clogged on a good day and nothing entertaining for the sports crowd around it was inviting failure.People wont put up with the hassle . No parking. Putting it under the CN Tower was all for show , not practical. City/Prov. politicians letting ego and image trump logic. Put it out in the suburbs critics said.
Instead, good things grew up around it . The stadium became a catlyst to get the things the location first lacked and now theres quite a bit of peripheral business going on even when Jays/Argos fortunes have waned.Skydome is out of style now as sports architecture goes but as a whole the Skydome/Rogers Centere is an unqualified success.
Such is the danger or folly in criticizing and condemning something before it has a chance to succeed.
MLB Baseball has 81 dates and football adds 10 for 91 dates guarenteed. Additionally there is an arena within walking distance that houses NBA and NHL teams for another 80 dates I'm not sure but I don't think we have a MLB team and Copps doesn't have an NHL or NBA tenant. Did I miss something or are we talking about an extra 600,000 visits with the Raptors, 600,000 with the Leafs and 1.2 M with the Jays assuming 15,000 extra visits per game for each team. Thats a total of 2.4 M extra visits to Toronto compared to what Hamilton can expect based on a very conservative estimate. Its very difficult to take any comparison seriously
Please read again. It's not a comparison of business generated .Its a comparison of location and the critique of location.
And if you want a business comparison. Things built up around the WH, or any other site, if any, will be relative to the amount of business the stadium generates.
I read it and the location issue and the criticisms of the site are very much related to the volume of people once you say
“Instead, good things grew up around it . The stadium became a catlyst to get the things the location first lacked and now theres quite a bit of peripheral business going on even when Jays/Argos fortunes have waned.” Sorry Zontar you cannot make the comparison without taking in the vastly different situations in volume. The entire rationale I have against Rheem is that it does nothing to promote urban renewal PRECISELY because of the low volume of visits
The two are not connected to downtown in any fashion, they never will be due to geography. Thats why SJAM makes more sense as a downtown urban renewal initiative AND it doesn’t suffer from the same lack of parking issues AND it is more accessible by auto and HSR without unwieldy transfers and/or long walks. It also makes more sense with the ability to turn Rheem into a new school and parkland that fits in with the area and eliminates neighborhood concerns about noise and traffic. Rheem is a terrible choice on many fronts even if it is better that the airport
I'd agree with that, that's about where Copps was built and while smaller than a football stadium, still a fairly significant number of people if filled with 17-18 thousand. Airport is better than Rheem though. Bob is saying why should the city spend all the $60 mill on Rheem when if it was built in a site the TigerCats want, this saves the city money and then they can clean up Rheem with a few million and not spend all the $60 mill. Makes sense to me.
Of course Tor. can generate more customers with more home dates. So any new stadium , if successful, will generate customers/business comensurate with what the CFL and minor league soccer does. Just becaue it wont spark an entire Tor. sized entertainment district doesnt make it a failure or the wrong choice.
Again, the critique with Skydome was its supposed inconvenient location. The huge Blue Jay crowds in the late 80s and early 90s proved people will put up with drawbacks from traffic/parking if there is an appetite for the product .
The "appetite" for the Blue Jay product was about "being in the place to be seen". Once that was over, guess what, Skydome or Rogers Centre didn't turn out to be all that great. The Blue Jays are one of the lowest teams in attendance in the league. Should Toronto ever want to build a $600 mill or so stadium for the Argos or NFL team, believe me, it will not be anywhere near the downtown and will have excellent access and parking on site combined with subway access which only Toronto will have, not Hamilton. That is a given.
Zontar
At the volumes and frequency of a CFL team it won't generate squat. What are the businesses to do the other 355 days a year. Its silly to compare on any level. I read it, I understood it and I disagreed with every word of it because the incredibly infrequent number or dates make the plan of sparking urban renewal thru the stadium is the primary failure of your argument. You seem to fail to recognize this in any way.
That's a commnetary on the habits of Tor. sports consumers not the stadium. At its peak people thought Skydome and its location was just fine and dandy and paid to prove that.
If you truly believed that then your argument would be why the CFL is even in business to begin with. Why would anyone want to own a franchise and why is there a need for a new stadium anywhere?
Since you’re not saying that up until now. Its difficult to take any of your arguments seriously if that’s your fallback position “The CFL cant generate squat” when you cant refute the usual stadium questions.
Actually you are both right Earl and Zontar. Toronto will put up with almost anything to go to a happening event. Earl is correct when the lustre wore off they would have been better off in a dfferent stadium and different location that more people would be willing to go to. The same is likely to happen for TFC. Downsview makes more sense for the Argos and TFC but that water under the bridge
As for us, this is a great comparison, how much is the appetite for Ticats football and will a bad location hurt attendance. IMO the Ticat appetite is only adequate not strong. A new stadium will draw for a few years no matter where its located but since the shine is off we should expect IWS type numbers if its just as hard to get to and worse numbers if its harder to get to. We have 50 years of experience at IWS to verify that rationale.
As for why anyone would own a team???? Not sure how that fits with your urban renewal argument. I'm saying a stadium won't spark renewal so lets put it somewhere where it will achieve what its supposed to.
Satisfy the need to have a home for the CFL team which is a community spirit raising enterprise that the city has decided is important enough to keep that its willing to underwrite the losses a stadium incurs
Satisfy the need to hold events that will minimize said losses
Satisfy the desire to raise the level of public facilities for amateur athletes
Points were about businesses directly attributed to what would be going on inside the stadium, that is, fan frquented bars and restaraunts before and after events etc. Never made an general urban renewal argument .
It was in response to how small-time you think the CFL is business-wise. “Squat” etc…
The fact that you claim the CFL is small time really has nothing to do with a word I’ve written. Its about volume. A CFL team on its own doesn’t generate a volume or frequency that will create a spark for urban renewal. Thats not a criticism of the CFL or an argument that the CFL is small time or that a CFL team is automatically a money loser. That is all your idea. I never said anything like that
Thats the $50M question. I’m OK with the site acquisition and remediation costs of $10M in order to clean up that cesspool but I really question whether the other $50M wouldn’t be better spent at a more viable site for the longterm health of the Tigercats. If you spend the $50M and lose the Tigercats anyway you’ve wasted the entire $62M because now you have to deal with an empty stadium that will eventually have to come down in yet another urban renewal initiative
The CFL is in a situation to be "big time" in a different sense here, not the major "big leagues' but with the 100th Grey Cup and will things like this year's Grey Cup selling out so quicky in a 60,000 seater, well, who knows what this league can achieve, even here in southern Ontario given the proper seeding conditions.
It was you said the CFL generates “squat”.
I said whatever business generated from a new stadium would be in direct porportion to the CFL or whatever else would be going on in there. If its small that doesnt make it a failure.Never made a general “urban renewal” argument. I dont think even the mayor is saying the stadium alone would “renew” the downtown he just said it would be but one part of it.
The Skydome comparison was never about “urban renewal” that wasnt even an issue or concern for Tor. then. It was about the choice of location. The downtown choice proved the critics wrong because people, more often than not ,came out in droves despite many of the same supposed the WH suffers from and what was built up around it was in porportion to that.