Halifax Stadium Discussion

[halifaxboyns]

I would think that people wanting to go to a game would be more inclined to stay at hotels closer to the stadium that were cheap, versus more expensive downtown hotels - whereas a convention will go with the hotels closest to the convention centre, regardless of cost (typically).

Calgary's Motel Village near the McMahon stadium is a great example of this tendancy. When I first lived in Fort Mac, I wanted to come down to Calgary; so I drove (9 bloody hours!) but didn't make a reservation anywhere, it was spur of the momment. Bad idea, there was two conferences, a tradeshow and a game going on. I went instantly to motel village because it was much cheaper than downtown - full, couldn't get anything. I don't want to call that a trend, but that was my experience and everytime there is a game and I drive buy, the hotels there have no vacancy.

There are a number of cheap hotels/motels near Edmonton's stadium/rink too. So that might also be something to consider in picking a site? Just a thought - certainly EP would get a check mark for that considering the hotels in Bayers Lake. I'd say the same for SP (Burnside hotels), Dartmouth Crossing (Burnside and DC hotels) and Woodside (Burnside and DC hotels).

One last thing - I had completely forgotten that a couple months ago I invested $200 in this planning book produced by the American Association of Planners, called "Planning and Urban Design Standards". When I worked in the Mac, the city bought a copy for the planning library, I wanted one for my own. It's got all these design standards (typically from the US) on everything from subdivisions, new residential and convention centres. But oddly enough, nothing on stadiums except a parking requirement. The suggested parking they had was 0.33 stalls per seat. So, at 25,000 seat minimum the APA would suggest 8,250 stalls. I believe we'd talked earlier about much less hadn't we?