Category: Toronto Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays stadium plan is still, as one columnist called it, “a trial balloon wrapped in a beta test,” with few real details beyond that it would require the demolition of SkyDome, cost “multibillion” dollars, and be “privately funded.” But that hasn’t stopped Toronto city councillor Joe Cressy from endorsing the plan sight unseen:

“The clear understanding from the earliest conversations was that [public funding] was not a consideration here,” Mr. Cressy said. “I don’t see it as an inherently politically contentious subject.”

The problem, of course, is that “no public stadium funding” is a claim that’s gone along with everything from a $350 million gift of public land to the most expensive baseball stadium subsidy of all time. And also that there can be reasons for a development deal to be contentious even if it doesn’t require public money. (Is what the Jays owners want really the best use of the stadium site?) It’s possible Cressy knows more than he’s letting on — the Jays stadium talks have apparently been going on in secret for years — but it’s also possible he’s just trying to spin the story as pay no attention to the financial details behind the curtain, in which case we definitely should be paying more attention to the financial details.

Meanwhile, even the hint of a new Blue Jays stadium has some people fantasizing about how great it would be if Toronto’s future ballpark could be modeled after another stadium that hasn’t actually been built yet:

Something like Nippon Ham Fighters future retractable roofed ballpark would fit nicely placed where Rogers Centre is now. #BlieJays

If you missed it, Blue Jays are looking to demolish Rogers Centre and build new stadium at same location.

Photoshop courtesy @temp_21 pic.twitter.com/5W5S7QOZdR

— MLB Cathedrals ⚾️ (@MLBcathedrals) November 27, 2020

That there is a Photoshop, all right! It also requires putting the new stadium on the site of the old stadium, which would defeat the purpose of moving it to the south to make way for new residential and office towers, but would be necessary to leave room for the retractable roof to retract, as can be seen in this Hokkaido rendering:

That’s an important question, though: Would a new Jays stadium have a roof? If so, it would be hard to have natural grass there, unless the roof fully retracts as in the above image, in which case there’s not much room on the site for a stadium plus additional buildings. (There’s a major highway not far south of the current stadium, which is the only direction it could expand in.) If not, it’s gonna be cold in April, which is the whole reason SkyDome was built as a dome. This could get contentious!

Right, so three days ago in a comment thread about whether major stadium and arena construction is likely to slow down in coming years (because of Covid and shifting political winds), FoS reader Aqib wrote,

By my count there are 2 MLB teams (Oakland and Tampa) that are in the market for new stadiums

and I replied,

the Diamondbacks have already said they’re considering a new stadium, the Blue Jays and White Sox have at least been kicking tires, and teams like the Indians and Orioles have talked about significant renovations

and they replied,

Blue Jays? All I heard was that they were looking at refurbishing the stadium to make it a pure baseball park, but that was 5 years ago. Is there anything new?

and I replied,

Nothing lately — that was the tire-kicking I referred to. But you don’t put Chekhov’s gun on the mantel unless you’re going to use it eventually.

By “eventually” I didn’t actually mean “by the end of this week,” but here we are:

The owner of the Toronto Blue Jays wants to demolish the Rogers Centre and construct a new stadium as part of a downtown Toronto redevelopment, according to sources involved in the project…

Rogers Communications Inc. and the real estate arm of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. are working with city, provincial and federal government officials on a plan that would effectively cut the Rogers Centre in half.

The partners would build a new, baseball-focused stadium on the foundations of the southern end of the current facility and adjacent parking lots. The northern portion of the 12.7-acre site would be turned into residential towers, office buildings, stores and public space.

Rogers is also considering building a new stadium on a lakefront site if plans for the Rogers Centre fall through.

The Globe & Mail reports that the project would cost “multibillion” dollars, and would be “privately funded” (by Blue Jays owners Rogers Communications) and developers Brookfield, but “needs numerous government approvals to move forward.” It also would use federally owned land, which raises all sorts of questions about how much the team and developers would pay for this valuable property, and whether the development would pay property taxes (more common for private developments on public land in Canada than in the U.S., but still not a given), and generally sets up the potential for a Canadian version of Anaheim’s “We’re getting market value for our stadium land but also not really” scenario.

The report also says that lobbying records show the Jays and Toronto officials have been discussing this plan for two years, that rebuilding the stadium “is expected to play out over five to eight years,” and that “it is not clear where the team would play if its Toronto stadium is being torn down and rebuilt.”

SkyDome — now the Rogers Centre officially, but still once and always SkyDome — was opened 31 years ago (by Alan Thicke, for some reason), and as noted the Jays have made faint noises about leaving for a new stadium before, so this is slightly less shocking than when the Atlanta Braves owners announced they were leaving their then-17-year-old stadium to move to suburban Cobb County or the Texas Rangers owners announced they would be moving across the street from their only marginally older stadium to one that was the same only with air conditioning. But still pretty shocking! There are, as noted, still a whole lot of unknowns about this one, so I think we can say we’re going to spend much of 2021 discussing all its ramifications. And if we end up spending 2022 on the Chicago White Sox, don’t say I didn’t warn you.