CFL.ca
Dear East Mountain Stadium Supporter,
Fred Eisenberger, the Mayor of Hamilton, is not listening to the experts. He continues to attempt to rally support to build a stadium in a location that makes no economic sense for a stadium. A location that all the experts who have looked at it recognize will not work for a stadium.
Please see Bob Young’s rebuttal to the Mayor’s recent Op Ed piece in the Hamilton Spectator below.
We need your help. Please send a note to some or all of Hamilton City Council to try and convince them that Hamilton needs a new stadium, but we need one that is financially sustainable without further taxpayer dollars in a location that works as a stadium.
Click here to contact Hamilton City Council members. Thank you for your help on this important project.
Hamilton Tiger-Cats
The City of Hamilton and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats need your help!
I’m not unhappy or frustrated with the Stadium debate in our community but I am very worried.
Public debates about the best way to make major public investments are always a good thing in our democracy. But it is essential that these debates are based on facts and not opinions or wishful thinking. The City is, quite correctly, committed to fixing up the underdeveloped but high potential West Harbour area of downtown Hamilton.
Unfortunately the debate in Hamilton is being characterized as being about Public Good versus Private Interest. But these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In fact in all successful cities they are in lock-step.
The idea is government builds infrastructure that enables the “invisible hand of the market” to work most efficiently. For example McMaster University in Hamilton is largely publicly funded and the result is that it graduates many of the bright young people who go on to build successful businesses in our community. Creating employment and paying the taxes that enable the next generation of students to be educated at McMaster.
A public investment such as a Stadium should be held to the same standard. It should be built in a way and in a location that enable the users of the Stadium to pay the costs of maintaining the stadium and to contribute to the economy of the City by bringing fans, and attendees from across the province to Hamilton. And to build the brand of the City of Hamilton across Canada and across North America.
To give you an idea of the value the Ticats bring to raising awareness of our community across North America, take a look at the Internet viral video phenomenon of Hamilton Ticat receiver Dave Stala on his TD celebration, more than a million people have viewed a version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuwfGLQQD2g
The problem the Pan Am stadium could fix is that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats have lost money consistently since the 1960’s and this financial stress has resulted in poor on-field performance ever since. I certainly deserve my share of criticism for the Ticats’ lack of success on the field in recent years, but the sad fact is our favorite team has under-performed compared to our competitors ever since the 1972 team we honoured at the game last night.
It is not easy running a professional sports team. With few exceptions such as the Maple Leafs or the New York Yankees, most sports teams barely pay their bills. So if Hamilton, the Province and the Government of Canada are going to invest in a stadium in Hamilton they cannot be casual about how they go about this, because they run the risk that they will build a stadium that cannot support the teams playing there.
To ensure we understood all the factors necessary to build a financially successful stadium for our City and our team, we have reached out to leading stadium experts across Canada and in the US. They studied all the stadiums built in North America over the last 30 years and studied the factors that made the successful ones successful and the factors that caused the unsuccessful ones to fail.
The list of these experts and their findings can be found at www.goeastmountain.com. They then came to Hamilton and studied all the possible locations for a 25,000 seat stadium. They concluded there were better locations than the East Mountain, but there were no worse locations for a stadium than the West Harbour due to many factors ranging from its proximity to a residential neighbourhood to its poor road access.
Interestingly, City Council in Hamilton used to agree with the stadium expert’s analysis. There used to be a plan, called the old Perimeter road project, to connect Burlington Street to the 403 Highway. When City Council decided to cancel that project they also recognized that without good road access the West Harbour area was not suitable for a 25,000 seat stadium. Hamilton’s “official plan” now dedicates the the West Harbour to medium density urban housing, offices, and retail development. Today the proposed West Harbour site is a mile and a half from the nearest highway access.
The City of Hamilton’s and the Ticats goal for the new stadium should be to host over a 100 dates a year. We may not get to a 100, but we know we can easily host dozens more events than we could at Ivor Wynne.
Large audience events ranging from Soccer, to national championships, to cultural festivals, to music concerts. To host this many events,the stadium cannot be located in a residential neighbourhood as all the traffic and crowds on that many dates will do significant harm to the quiet enjoyment of the residents of those neighbourhoods. It is exactly this problem that limits our beloved but old Ivor Wynne Stadium to little more than the ten Tiger-Cat home games every year.
The reason I’m so worried is that the Tiger-Cats have gone bust 6 times (just ask any of the previous owners/managers of the team if you don’t believe me) in the last 30 years playing at Ivor Wynne. This Pan Am stadium is our once in a lifetime opportunity to build a stadium where the City and the Ticats can pay their bills hosting many more events than just 10 CFL football home games at a new stadium that will serve our community for the next sixty years.
If our elected leaders choose to attempt to fix an eyesore in the West Harbour with the Pan Am funds without listening to the experts on why that location will not work for hosting successful large audience events then the stadium will be a financial failure. But more likely Hostco, the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the Tiger-Cats, and I would hope the City of Hamilton will chose not to make such an investment.
The result would be that the more than $60 million dollars that the Province and the Government of Canada want to invest in our community will be spent elsewhere.
Please help convince our Mayor and our Council that we need to work together to come up with win-win solutions for both the West Harbour and the East Mountain Stadium before the Pan Am funds are no longer available to us.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Cheers,
Bob
Bob Young
Caretaker, Hamilton Tiger-Cats
