Quote:
Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
Ottawa wants to replace a perfectly good stadium that just happens to be in a not great place. And the last time they turned the screws on an ownership group it built a stadium with mostly if not all private money (no idea on tax breaks) then promptly went bankrupt.
So they have a lot of memories helping to guide their decision making.
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The location that is (was?) on the table is truly spectacular. Frankly speaking, I think our nation capital should be holding such a prime piece of land for future opportunities, rather than an arena. Anyway, curious what happens with this. I agree that Ottawa's current arena is spectacular. Just silly how it was built basically out of town with a single road out to it. I guess the view must have been that the arena would itself drive development around it, but didn't happen. Arenas on their own cannot drive development. They are only used so few hours of the year, all things considered, and traditional land planning around them, like in Ottawa, has so much tarmac that nothing actually can interact, and further, it becomes like a lake that doesn't allow flow of people or cars through it.
It is interesting how they now call all arenas event centres. Apparently at Calgary city hall, Druh asked what the difference was between an arena and an event centre, and the response was crickets. So it is just a psychological manipulation with the new words. Kind of like duplex being replaced with cool and chic semi-detached.