The city wants to cleanup the downtown and the Football owner does not want to put 50 million in downtown so why not consider to do a serious redesign at IW for 64 million dollars and the city can pump its 55 million in the downtown and put trees and dog urinals and whatever else it wants at the Rheem site and and Bob can get a better lease and market some other events at IW and make a few bucks.
I mean 64 million you get new corp boxes, new dressing rooms, concrete repairs, expanded seating new lighting and rigging gear, new concession areas.
HfxTC.
Read the City report from 2009. It’s all in there. Especially Page 9. This is not just about the stadium.
And Bob is adamant about the need to move from IWS because of the location. Unless you can find a way to get him 7 million more a year in revenue to keep him there…after the 64 million reno job.
One thing the city and the Tiger-Cats agree on is that IWS is done. Even fixed up it'll cost too much to maintain and doesn't allow caretaker to make money there.
Let's say the City , the Cats and some backers with deep pockets agree that the present location of IWS would be agreeable to all. Why stop at refurbishing a 1950's/70's outdated stadium, let's just build a new one.
The City owns the land and it is already serviced for that type of use. So that does away with any remediation of the soil that will take place at the Rheim site, price yet to be determined. The City wouldn't have to buy up the residential land around the Rheim site, again price as yet unknown. So I guess that would be plusses on the money side.
To facilitate building a brand new stadium, let's go big at around 32,000 seats just for the fun of it, you would have to take over Brian Timmis soccer pitch on the south side, so that is a loss to some of the sporting community. To improve parking, after that is all part of the make believe exercise that lead to an agreement, you would have to buy old Scott Park School and the adjacent arena for what might double the parking at that site. A bonus that way but another loss to sports in the area. Pool would have to stay, it is a city treasure.
The actual construction would have to be done in stages so that the team could remain there playing. Build the new South stands behind the present ones. Tear the old ones down when seasons over and relocate the field southward, not forgetting the track. Erect temporary North stands for the next season alongside the new field. and tear the old ones down. Next off season build the new North Stands. I am sure an actual engineer could figure out the logistics.
Money wise, it might be a "push" for what the total amount at Rheim might have been, maybe a bit less, with bigger stadium and a bit more parking. Either way, I have never seen a major construction job in this city end up costing what was first presented as a total, always seems to go up quite a bit so who could even guess.
Anyway fun to think about. Anybody else have ideas how to make the old site work?
Stage 1 Removal of Sec 14 to 30 put in new Stands If they start in Nov in Could be done by June
Stage 2 (following year Removal of last Section of Stands and Replacement Again Step done by June
Stadium could be done before 2014 and not cost as more 80 Million.
Too bad Both City and Ticats don't want a Stadium there.
If wounder how came on the 80 Dollar Figure
This stadium was build for 80 Million US so that around 85 Million Canadian
I am sure with Help we cut that from 85 to 80 Canadian
It's fun to imagine fixing-up/rebuilding Ivor Wynne. I would only add the dream of leveling the Scott Park property and putting up a 7 level (three below grade and four above) parking structure to facilitate game day parking. Ahhh the dream of driving to a game and finding reasonable parking. Sigh.
A problem with event parking in multilevel garages is limited ingress/egress. It might not be so bad before a game because people arrive spread over several hours, but after the game it would be a huge bottleneck. In this respect, having parking diffused throughout an area allows more exit options.
I agree there is a certain charm about IWS that will definitely disappear with a new stadium. For one thing, a new stadium with a track will be a lot less intimate. The fact the sideline walls at IWS are within 10 yards of the sidelines is pretty unique nowadays. Look at a number of European soccer stadiums with tracks around the field. Stuttgart, Nürnberg and Berlin’s Olyimpastadion are a few I’ve visited, and compared to IWS the field is far away. Fans won’t be within easy speaking (cursing) distance of the team bench either… The only stadium that I think compares to IWS in terms of setting is Lambeau Field, where you can park on someone’s lawn and wander over to the game (you can also do that for Bills games, but it’s not the same).
