Quote:
Originally Posted by brettinhalifax
It isn't speculation. It is what Bob Young says the situation is. He is the only person in this conversation (you, me, the mayor, city council, the Pan-Am committee) that will actually lose money depending on the outcome of the debate.
He's playing with his own money, everyone else is playing with someone else's money. IMO that makes him the most trustworthy. He's got skin in the game.
Hey I see both sides. Can you?
The Mayor and Council are in the business of city building and have a Field of Dreams attitude towards the Tiger-Cats "If you build it, they will come"
Bob Young is in the business of CFL football and thinks that the stadium won't be a success unless his team survives.
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This discussion is pointless. Of course you aren't looking at two sides. You are basing your argument by using an owner's speculation as fact. Bob Young is not in the business of CFL football, he is someone with deep pockets who bought the team (this hardly makes him an expert). The argument that since he succeeded in business that he must know what he is doing is also a bunch of baloney. The city is investing $50 million in the stadium, so they have more to lose than Bob Young.
The only thing that I think is a mistake is that the city is trying to build an iconic stadium that seats 15,000 which is expandable for the Tiger-Cats, whereas I think they could go with a more practical design that seats 30,000 (eliminate all the fancy curves and glass) for the same amount of money. I would agree with this argument, if that is your point but as far as location goes you used a couple of exceptions like the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and the Giants Stadium and ignored all the others (the majority) that have been built in downtown locations. In a suburban location people will drive to the stadium, park, watch the game and then get back in their cars and go home. This doesn't provide much benefit to a city. In the case of Hamilton, I hope that they boot Bob Young out of the city and find a more deserving owner. If they lose the Tiger-Cats then another owner can get an expansion team.
PS: Neither of us know enough to be commenting on this. My only point is that a downtown Hamilton location would seem to be a very good location. Having lived in Hamilton for a few years, I can't see anything wrong with such a location. Hamilton has a lot of one way multi-lane streets (it provides great traffic flow through the city). I assume this is why people can only get into the stadium from one direction. However, this is the case with most locations in the downtown Hamilton core (because of all the one way streets) - people just go around the block so that they are going in the right direction. I wonder about the reporters that wrote these stories because they are filled with exaggerations and twisted facts that I would expect of the Save the View group in Halifax.