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Originally Posted by darkharbour
What does this even mean? There isn't any conspiracy at play here, it's an opportunistic choice by Harris to go after this arena, same as he has been doing for years with buildings in the old North End for example. No one wants to move the unhoused population from the areas of the city with the continuum of services necessary for their care, if anything the most common effort is to increase the funding share contributed by outlying areas to support those same core services.
The Belyea area was shut down because it is incredibly old and needed significant refurbishment, and the city was being financially prudent by trying to curtail its ongoing operating costs by not over-investing in the most highly subsidized and costly recreational facilities [ice rinks]. All of the arenas in the city are much older than the national average, so building a new multiplex isn't about savings from shutting down Belyea alone, it stems from the fact that virtually all of the neighbourhood rinks are near end-of-life and need replacing in the next ~5 years.
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First off, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, it's painfully obvious what was at play here. Which goes back to the decision to turn it into a season warming shelter for the homeless... Uptown elites foisting their homeless problems on an asset they decided to shutdown on the West Side.
Why not build the multiplex rink at the Belyea? That will be out of the question if they just railroad through Brents proposal and foist 40+ transitonal housing units in the middle of a the Bayshore neighbourhood. Why rob a neighbourhood of it's rink and replace it with something 1000 times worse than a hockey rink. It's no wonder Saint John hasn't had any NHLers in a while, and evident with how little people care about stuff like ice rinks in Canada's oldest city. In other Canadian cities there would be protests about shutting down a rink, let alone shutting down a rink in the middle of a residential neighbourhood to put up something one step above a homeless shelter. Saint John has a drastic need for transitional housing. Why not put up some container homes at the port.
If it's beyond life as a rink, tear the thing down. Put up a nice 20 storey or higher with some of the things they were trying to stuff into the Belyea area, but give the neighbourhood what it actually wants and needs, which is more housing. There could be a great opportunity to include special care home facilities for the elderly, affordable housing, and maybe some luxury condos/ apartments on the top floors. We're in the middle of a housing crisis, a failing healthcare system, and a critical lack of beds for the elderly who can no longer live on their own, and this is a problem which will only get worse and worse as more and more of the boomers get older.
We need beds for special care homes for our grandparents and parents more than we need transitional housing on the West Side. We need more affordable housing on the West Side, and we also need recreation facilities. The lower West Side has now lost an outdoor rink at Marketplace, had the funding taken away to build a new rink at marketplace, and had the Belyea Arena shut down... and Beaconsfield hasn't been used as a rink in decades, even though it would be far less of a safety and reliability issue compared to Lily Lake which rarely meets the city's absurdly high minimum for ice thickness, since they insist on using heavy machinery to clear off the ice.
Neighbourhood volunteers could have that shovelled off in a matter of a few hours on skates, but no, let's get the city works crew to do it instead, and do it like twice a year now since the ice is almost never thick enough for their machinery.
Outdoor rinks on land don't have the inherent risk of falling into water. Saint John's "ice strategy" is straight up BUNK. They didn't even have the balls to implement user fees on non city residents, which could have funded a refurbishment or replacement for the Belyea, and tried to make it sound like 4 rinks is more than enough since 3.5 rinks is all we really need. 4 might be enough to service 69,000 people, but we're closer to 75,000 now, and the metro area is on the way to 150,000 and beyond. $180k a year in savings is not worth an asset sitting unsold and generating zero tax revenue. The city had a chance to sell it to a private seller, which would have put money in the coffers and start generating tax revenue again. As Mayor Darling pointed out, it wasn't a good look for the city saying they can't compete or coexist with a private rink operator.
The Belyea arena building takes up a huge footprint for only 2 levels. It's designed as a rink, not for housing. It's not dignified to the people that Brent and his team want to stuff in there, it's inconsiderate to home owners and renter in the surrounding neighbourhood, and it's just squandering the potential for what could be a really exciting development opportunity to build something the neighbourhood actually wants and needs.
People in the neighbourhood could get behind a nice building with some special care facilities, affordable housing, and some more luxurious options too. What other locations in Saint John honestly offer a better view of the Bay of Fundy than what would be seen from 25 storeys above looking out across Bayshore Beach and Partridge Island. Not going to see any of those views from a hockey rink with two storeys. It's oceanfront real-estate. How is 40 or so transitional housing units stuffed inside what you've described as an "incredibly old hockey rink" the right kind of usage for a huge oceanview property with ample parking. It would be far better utilized for hundreds of apartments and condos.
The last thing West Side needs or wants is transitional housing replacing a once popular arena. Saint John absolutely needs transitional housing, but the Belyea Arena is NOT the logical place to locate such housing. Suburban families don't want those type of living arrangement nearby their homes, and it's completely unnecessary to build such an undesirable neighbour in the middle of a quaint seaside residential suburb, when we have all kinds of vacant lands and buildings within or adjacent to commercial and industrial areas, away from suburban neighbourhoods.
Brent's team, is a bunch of people from KV, Fredericton, and even Toronto. Pardon me if I don't thin they have the neighbourhood's best interest at heart when they don't even live here. They just want to say they've done something to help the unhoused, but not in their backyard! A huge transitional housing project shouldn't have to be in anyone's backyard.
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