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Originally Posted by someone123
One thing to keep in mind is that the media and many people in general in the Maritimes tend to be unusually negatively biased toward projects like this. There is always a naysayer contingent that's much stronger than what I normally see in other parts of Canada (though it seems to be in decline), but most of it is noise. You can hear a perpetual negative drumbeat about how a project will never work and will bankrupt the city/province. Then one day the project is just approved and built and it's fine. Sometimes the anti crowd continues to pretend the project is a failure long after it is clearly not a failure.
The Nova Centre was like this. In the media it is bankrupting the city and province and is a flop. In the real world it's well used and people like the area, which is way better than it was before the project. And the finances of both the city and province have been improving every year.
I see the CFL project as being much the same. This doesn't mean it will work out but it's not as risky or far-fetched as some people want to make it out to be. Even if the city spends $40-100M on a stadium and the CFL folds, there's a lot of value to be had from the facility, and that sum is nowhere near make-or-break territory for the municipality (which has a $1B+ budget every year; HRM has spent $40M on a single multi-pad neighbourhood ice rink before). I think the biggest concern is making sure that the stadium is useful for a lot of things and is in a good location.
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Those first two paragraphs could have been written about Winnipeg. I suspect it's something that afflicts mid sized cities where there is a need or at least a desire for certain big city amenities like stadiums or whatever else, but getting them built isn't necessarily a slam dunk the way it might be in a larger city like Montreal. And then they take on a life of their own as politicians try to boost their career by catering to the 'no' crowd, and on and on it goes.
I would agree that a somewhat modest pro stadium for a city like Halifax is not an unreasonable expense considering it would probably be the region's main stadium for the next 50 years. There's value in that.