Halifax Stadium Discussion

[Keith P.]

We've been over this many times before, but the drawbacks to Shannon are numerous:

1. The Candlestick Park effect. When I worked downtown the difference in summertime temperture between Brunswick street and the waterfront was often dramatic - shirtsleeve weather on Brunswick became intolerably cold on Water St. That is a basic fact.

2. Infrastructure - Shannon has none. It is serviced currently by a one-lane road that needs to cross a rail level crossing. An entirely new multilane road network with overpass would be required at great cost.

3. Accessibility - very poor. There is little residential in the area and the argument that it is within walking distance is ridiculous The idea of a ferry is equally ridiculous. You not only have no infrastructure in place for that but also no ferry. If you did build a duplicate of the existing putt-putt ferry it would not be an attractive offering and would not move a significant number of people in any event.

People seem to like Shannon for a stadium only because they cannot think of any other use for the area.

[lawsond]

Not to be too much of a stick in the mud...but why is putting a stadium somewhere around Sackville such a bad idea...or even a bit further up the 102 corridor...easier access for people from Moncton and Chucktown and at the crossroads of the South Shore, Valley, HRM and Truro/Collchester?

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

We've been over this many times before, but the drawbacks to Shannon are numerous:

1. The Candlestick Park effect. When I worked downtown the difference in summertime temperture between Brunswick street and the waterfront was often dramatic - shirtsleeve weather on Brunswick became intolerably cold on Water St. That is a basic fact.

There is plenty of room at Shannon Park. Why would a stadium have to be built so close to the water (as close as Water St.)? Also, trees can be planted to provide a wind-break. Berms can be created to provide shelter from the wind. The existing topography already provides shelter. Instead of the Candlestick Park effect, I prefer to think of the AT&T Park effect (a beautiful stadium close to the waterfront and a major bridge - doesn't that sound a lot like a Shannon Park stadium?).

2. Infrastructure - Shannon has none. It is serviced currently by a one-lane road that needs to cross a rail level crossing. An entirely new multilane road network with overpass would be required at great cost.

Are you suggesting that thousands of parking spots must be put at Shannon Park? Why not have smaller parking lots within 1 - 2 Km of Shannon Park and people can walk to the stadium? This is the best way to mitigate traffic jams - don't concentrate all the parking in one area.

3. Accessibility - very poor. There is little residential in the area and the argument that it is within walking distance is ridiculous The idea of a ferry is equally ridiculous. You not only have no infrastructure in place for that but also no ferry. If you did build a duplicate of the existing putt-putt ferry it would not be an attractive offering and would not move a significant number of people in any event.

Having a ferry terminal provides another means to the downtown that can be used not just for a Shannon Park stadium, but also for commuters travelling from Bedford and Sackville. With the 107 highway planned to start soon, this seems like an ideal location for such a "park & ride" facility. There can also be bus connections.

People seem to like Shannon for a stadium only because they cannot think of any other use for the area.

Once the area is cleared, has good transit connections and a stadium then it would be a good location for high-rise residential, similar to King's Wharf. The city might be able to get a good profit on its land acquisition money once a stadium is underway.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by lawsond

Not to be too much of a stick in the mud...but why is putting a stadium somewhere around Sackville such a bad idea...or even a bit further up the 102 corridor...easier access for people from Moncton and Chucktown and at the crossroads of the South Shore, Valley, HRM and Truro/Collchester?

Chucktown?

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

There is plenty of room at Shannon Park. Why would a stadium have to be built so close to the water (as close as Water St.)? Also, trees can be planted to provide a wind-break. Berms can be created to provide shelter from the wind. The existing topography already provides shelter. Instead of the Candlestick Park effect, I prefer to think of the AT&T Park effect (a beautiful stadium close to the waterfront and a major bridge - doesn't that sound a lot like a Shannon Park stadium?).

North-end Dartmouth isn't San Francisco, and the MacKay is hardly the Golden Gate. Plus AT&T Park doesn't have a large smoke-spewing power plant right next to it.

The problem with the site isn't just the wind. It is the proximity to that large mass of cold water. The terrain is flat and offers no help.

Are you suggesting that thousands of parking spots must be put at Shannon Park? Why not have smaller parking lots within 1 - 2 Km of Shannon Park and people can walk to the stadium? This is the best way to mitigate traffic jams - don't concentrate all the parking in one area.

You need parking reasonably close. 2KM isn't close enough. You still have a one-lane road with a level crossing. Only a fool would think that is adequate for a $60M facility. Get real. You need good vehicle access to any such site.

Having a ferry terminal provides another means to the downtown that can be used not just for a Shannon Park stadium, but also for commuters travelling from Bedford and Sackville. With the 107 highway planned to start soon, this seems like an ideal location for such a "park & ride" facility. There can also be bus connections.

All very interesting but irrelevant to the stadium question.

Once the area is cleared, has good transit connections and a stadium then it would be a good location for high-rise residential, similar to King's Wharf. The city might be able to get a good profit on its land acquisition money once a stadium is underway.

Uhhh... yeah. Suuuuure.

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

North-end Dartmouth isn't San Francisco, and the MacKay is hardly the Golden Gate. Plus AT&T Park doesn't have a large smoke-spewing power plant right next to it.

Regarding the Tuffs Cove Generating Station, this is from Wikipedia: Due to low prices in recent years, the entire plant has run largely on natural gas, which has dramatically decreased its emissions profile. A sixth generating unit, known as a combined-cycle generator was completed in 2011. It uses the heat exhaust of the plant's two combustion turbines to generate 50 MW of electricity while using significantly less fuel. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tufts_Cove_Generating_Station). You are probably seeing steam coming from the exhaust-stacks and are confusing it with smoke.

[reddog794]

I agree with Keith.


Location, being on a protruding peninsula with only a lane for access, is not a good starting point. All the infrastructure for the campus would have to be brand new. Not to mention the lack of daily use of said new infrastructure. Anybody from sackville/Bedford, trying to get DT will want a ferry from Bedford, or take the Bi-Hi like they do now.

Shannon Park has a much better future as a possible location for housing and mixed retail location. The closest concentration of people in the area is highfield park. Not a friendly walk that is, from experience.


A true centrally located stadium would replace the Canada Games baseball field on the commons, beside the Pavillion. All the infrastructure is there. As well as give people who want a show in the commons a safe and secure area, while minimising the damage done to the environs. It is just beside Quinpool rd. which has a multiple level parkade at it's enterence. As well as being a side street parking road. A progressive idea would be to allow side street parking around the commons on game days.


I do disagree with the idea of a 20,000 seat stadium being built outside the core. I've gone to plenty of Sens' games to miss when they were a the civic centre, size or not.

[Josh M]

I don't think that football stadiums need to be built in the city like a baseball stadium or an arena. They are completely different venues, football stadiums are only in use a hand full of times a year, whereas baseball stadiums and arenas are used very frequently.

[Empire]

Originally Posted by Josh M

I don't think that football stadiums need to be built in the city like a baseball stadium or an arena. They are completely different venues, football stadiums are only in use a hand full of times a year, whereas baseball stadiums and arenas are used very frequently.

This multi purpose stadium would be used year round as outlined in the overpriced consultants report. If we back out of this venture we are just adding to our current bad reputation as a waffling indecisive city. MacKay made it clear from the beginning that he was still very displeased with the way the ciy/province handled the bail out of the CWG when he was offering $400 million.

It is hard to believe we are doing it again.........if we can't build a stadium when there is a reason to do so you can be assured we won't be building a stadium for no reason. We are now letting two reasons to build a stadium slip by.....shame on this city as this decision will be regretted far more than any financing costs .

I think we are better off with a 12,000 permanent stadium with capability of expansion to 25,000 then nothing at all.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Empire

This multi purpose stadium would be used year round as outlined in the overpriced consultants report. If we back out of this venture we are just adding to our current bad reputation as a waffling indecisive city. MacKay made it clear from the beginning that he was still very displeased with the way the ciy/province handled the bail out of the CWG when he was offering $400 million.

It is hard to believe we are doing it again.........if we can't build a stadium when there is a reason to do so you can be assured we won't be building a stadium for no reason. We are now letting two reasons to build a stadium slip by.....shame on this city as this decision will be regretted far more than any financing costs .

Although tournaments and other sports events do produce more of a reason to build a stadium, the main reason must be for the city in which it's built. This needs to be a development fitted for HRM in a cost-effective manner -- and there are many in Halifax who are strongly opposed to building a stadium because of a lack of explaination with regards to its affordability.

I support a stadium, which is community-based and is as centrally located as possible; however, as I've been reading media, blog, and facebook comments pertaining to this topic I'm discovering many people whom are against a stadium -- and this one lengthy rant by someone named John Wesley Chisholm, posted in a debate on facebook, caught my attention because of how full-loaded it was. While some argue a stadium will be an asset to our economy, he argues against:

If I believed even one of those many statements in the classic leisure economy crowd-think line of talk were true I would help build the stadium myself.

The shipbuilding contract is a big number but on the ground in Halifax we're talking ...about 2500 jobs at the maximum output phase. Not enough to sustain us against loses in other areas of the provincial economy.

In finance it sometimes makes sense to borrow money to invest because the return is quantifiable greater than the cost of borrowing. It can also match the cost of an income producing asset to its useful life there by fairly sharing its total cost. But that's not this. This is government as consumer. It's spending plain and simple. Just like ringing up your credit card for a week at an all-inclusive where you swear you're going to work out everyday and connect with your muse.

The space around stadiums are wastelands. Would you want to live or work near a giant, noisy party space?

Ubanizing to increase carbon neutrality and all those lines of talk are great but they are the same - exactly the same - for all kinds of course of action. You could make all these same arguments for building Canada's largest prison on the site.

No one ever as ever suggested that a stadium would make money. Never. The whole thing turns on the notion of 'spin offs' - a very little understood concept about the real economic impact of any course of action being greater than the sum of its parts due to the effect of money exchange multipliers.

You're exactly right about there being no incremental health benefit to this stadium but the exact same logic applies to tourism, local entertainment (as opposed to traveling stadium rock acts that only will come if they think they can leave with more than they arrived with) and tourism. Why, if every decent place already has a stadium would tourist come to see ours?

The truth is the hawkers, pitchers hard and soft sellers and spin a line of talk to justify anything. That was the joke of the Simpsons monorail episode. IT's been going on for thousands of years. And the truth is that we're fabulously wealthy and we can afford, over generations, almost any crazy scheme.

We need some kind of critical method to decide who and what to believe and to what degree.

Here's what I propose. Let's say that stadiums and concerts and games are luxuries that we should be able to afford in good times. So that's what we want - real good times. LEt's define good times as times we can consistently look after everything we already have without increasing debt.

So... the simple question becomes what is the very best thing we can do to invest our limited resources and possibly more debt to create the wealth required to bring on those good times. Looking at it this way it is not possible to get "stadium" even on to the top 100 list of ideas for good ways forward.See More

[beyeas]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

Although tournaments and other sports events do produce more of a reason to build a stadium, the main reason must be for the city in which it's built. This needs to be a development fitted for HRM in a cost-effective manner -- and there are many in Halifax who are strongly opposed to building a stadium because of a lack of explaination with regards to its affordability.

I support a stadium, which is community-based and in as centrally located as possible, but in reading media, blog, and facebook comments pertaining to this topic -- and this one lengthy rant by someone named John Wesley Chisholm, posted in a debate on facebook, caught my attention because of how full-loaded it was. While some argue a stadium will be an asset to our economy, he argues against:

If I believed even one of those many statements in the classic leisure economy crowd-think line of talk were true I would help build the stadium myself.

The shipbuilding contract is a big number but on the ground in Halifax we're talking ...about 2500 jobs at the maximum output phase. Not enough to sustain us against loses in other areas of the provincial economy.

In finance it sometimes makes sense to borrow money to invest because the return is quantifiable greater than the cost of borrowing. It can also match the cost of an income producing asset to its useful life there by fairly sharing its total cost. But that's not this. This is government as consumer. It's spending plain and simple. Just like ringing up your credit card for a week at an all-inclusive where you swear you're going to work out everyday and connect with your muse. ...

An issue that I have with that argument(s) of his though is that it could apply to ANY public infrastructure project. Take pretty much that entire thing and replace stadium with library/arena/pool/highway etc, and it wouldn't change. I am not saying White Elephants are awesome, but I am saying that the fact that a public project has a net cost to the taxpayer is often more of a surrogate argument for something else that is harder to sell. A stadium will not cost money, period, and many people will get hung up on that fact and say well then it isn't feasible as a "business". What we really need to decide from an economic standpoint is a) how and where to build it to maximize usage and impact, and then b) how much cost are we willing to eat as a taxpayer in the same way that we do for other publicly offered infrastructure?

JWB loves to hear himself speak, and has never ever seen a government service that he didn't hate (unless it was his idea). Crusaders need Crusades.

[FuzzyWuz]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

Once the area is cleared, has good transit connections and a stadium then it would be a good location for high-rise residential, similar to King's Wharf. The city might be able to get a good profit on its land acquisition money once a stadium is underway.

I think this is one of the most important points to be made right now. Since the planning has been moved from short term to a longer term we have a bit more time to consider things more holistically. From a long term urban planning perspective Shannon park is a huge piece of land with fairly unlimited potential. A stadium would be a small part of what Shannon park can become.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by FuzzyWuz

I think this is one of the most important points to be made right now. Since the planning has been moved from short term to a longer term we have a bit more time to consider things more holistically. From a long term urban planning perspective Shannon park is a huge piece of land with fairly unlimited potential. A stadium would be a small part of what Shannon park can become.

I agree. A stadium is a massive investment and must be used smartly as a development tool for future urbanisation. This potential is greatly lost if the stadium location is in a car-dependent, distant, and atmospherically stale business park; as well, there is a growing segment of the population -- including immigrants -- who are not purchasing vehicles and are only using public transit when necessary. This choice of living as close to the core as possible needs to be further encouraged as we make such investments like a stadium.

There is so much waterfront property to be developed!!

[someone123]

The shipbuilding contract is a big number but on the ground in Halifax we're talking ...about 2500 jobs at the maximum output phase. Not enough to sustain us against loses in other areas of the provincial economy.

This siege mentality is ridiculous. It's like the story of mentally-ill New York financial moguls living off of cat food. Halifax's investment is governed more by a kind of collective lack of confidence and neurosis than it is by rational decisions based on the value of the infrastructure and the capacity to pay for it.

The idea of being frugal and holding off on spending might sound prudent but it is not necessarily better than overspending. A city can't work without infrastructure, and in Halifax a lot of infrastructure is in poor shape and is well below the norm in other parts of North America. You know something's wrong when a city with a $600M+ budget that has hundreds of thousands of people wasting hours each week in traffic has a hard time widening a single road or spending $20M on a bus terminal. It's absurd and comes at a high price, even though it isn't a line item in the capital budget.

The stadium situation exists because of the same mentality. In other cities a stadium is a normal piece of infrastructure, but in Halifax politicians are afraid to pull the trigger even though we have already lost events because our current woefully undersized stadium is literally falling apart.

[CG91]

Driving home from work today they were talking about the stadium issue on News95.7. I can't remember which councillour to quote here as I just caught part of the conversation, but they stated that the Racino bid involved a playing field on one side and a racino track on the other with seats being able to be rotated in some way. They offered 50 million towards the construction. I really like this idea from a resident who seeks entertainment in the quality of life here in Halifax. This does however sound like it would be a more expensive stadium to build considering it would be some model that would involve reversing the seating direction? Either way this option was turned down as they said Nova Scotia would not entertain the idea of giving them a licence for such a facility.

Hopefully someone else heard this interview and can source what was said more accuartely.

[CG91]

They also said on News95.7 that Mayor Peter Kelly has put forward an idea of borrowing the money with a 30 year amortization period. They stated it would only cost the tax payers 6 dollars a year over that time. I'll happily pay my 6 dollars per year up front!

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by CG91

Driving home from work today they were talking about the stadium issue on News95.7. I can't remember which councillour to quote here as I just caught part of the conversation, but they stated that the Racino bid involved a playing field on one side and a racino track on the other with seats being able to be rotated in some way. They offered 50 million towards the construction. I really like this idea from a resident who seeks entertainment in the quality of life here in Halifax. This does however sound like it would be a more expensive stadium to build considering it would be some model that would involve reversing the seating direction? Either way this option was turned down as they said Nova Scotia would not entertain the idea of giving them a licence for such a facility.
Hopefully someone else heard this interview and can source what was said more accuartely.

Since part of this land belongs to First Nations people, we need not go through the provincial government -- or at least this is the argument.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

I support a stadium, which is community-based and is as centrally located as possible; however, as I've been reading media, blog, and facebook comments pertaining to this topic I'm discovering many people whom are against a stadium -- and this one lengthy rant by someone named John Wesley Chisholm, posted in a debate on facebook, caught my attention because of how full-loaded it was. While some argue a stadium will be an asset to our economy, he argues against: <snip>

John Wesley Chisholm is a local internet gadfly, a former musician in the Johnny Favourites Orchestra in the 1990s who now is allegedly a "filmmaker", undoubtedly living off government grants and the occasional CBC appearance like most artsy types, making stuff nobody ever sees. He considers himself a self-appointed expert on municipal govt like Waye Mason for some reason, but he is always so far off-base he actually makes Mason seem both knowledgeable and likable by comparison, as impossible as that may seem. He has opinions on everything, and they are always wrong. His ego is massive and he seems totally oblivious to the real world. Ignore anything he puts out.

[Empire]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

John Wesley Chisholm is a local internet gadfly, a former musician in the Johnny Favourites Orchestra in the 1990s who now is allegedly a "filmmaker", undoubtedly living off government grants and the occasional CBC appearance like most artsy types, making stuff nobody ever sees. He considers himself a self-appointed expert on municipal govt like Waye Mason for some reason, but he is always so far off-base he actually makes Mason seem both knowledgeable and likable by comparison, as impossible as that may seem. He has opinions on everything, and they are always wrong. His ego is massive and he seems totally oblivious to the real world. Ignore anything he puts out.

Exactly, don't be surprised if JWC's silly rant is based on the premise that I will attack everything that may require gov. funding so that I may have more for myself somehow, somewhere, sometime...All this rant does is sadly point out the lack of sports enthusiasm in this town. Everyone who rants against the stadium sure as hell is not a Red Sox fan.....this town needs a seroius kick in the ass!

[BravoZulu]

Here is an idea I have been thinking about for a while, not sure if it has been mentioned before so if it has please forgive me.

Consider a stadium development (Shannon park or elsewhere) which includes condo towers around the field. Some of them (the inward facing ones) would have excellent views of games, concerts etc. The outward facing ones would have water views if located in Shannon park, but perhaps the roof could allow these poor owners to still see the game from their home.

If the city was the controlling developper (by financing the project) surely they could fund a stadium through the profits from the condo sales. I know some wouldn't want to live near a sports stadium, and that's fine, there are tons of condos in Clayton Park, but I for one would be quite happy to purchase a condo with a balcony on the 50 yard line (kind of like expensive skyboxes). I'd probably still purchase tickets to the games for a more intimate experience but still seems like a way to raise the required funds for a stadium from people who choose to pay for it. The city would be on the hook for the initial financing but in the end it should be close to a zero cost and then property taxes would come in from the homeowners.

Thoughts?

I'm definitely not a finance major or a developper so I'm interested to hear what you guys think, just seems win-win to me, more residents in an underdevelopped location, justification for a ferry crossing and quasi free stadium.

BZ