September 06, 2011
Hamilton's Ivor Wynne to be replaced, not rebuilt
While we're in Canada, it was announced last week that Ivor Wynne Stadium, home of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, won't be getting a renovation as approved last February, but instead will be completely demolished and replaced. The rebuild, city officials promised, could be done under the same $152 million budget, so why not buy a new stadium instead of keeping half an old one?
It sounds reasonable enough, except for the bit where this was apparently decided back in April but not made public until now. As the Hamilton Spectator editorialized last week:
By the way, how does it happen that a complete rebuild will cost the same as rebuilding the south and renovating the north? Again, we're told, don't worry your little heads about it. According to senior city staff, more study on the project resulted in a more "refined" cost estimate. So the original estimate was too high? But why? And since city council made the Ivor Wynne decision based on the original cost and project description, doesn't this mean the decision was made on inaccurate information?
So the north stands will go from benches to seats. But how much money could have been saved by sticking with the original plan — $5 million, $10 million? Shouldn't council have had the option of making that decision instead of being presented with a fait accompli? Shouldn't council have had the chance to decide between applying the savings to other projects — say the increasingly expensive velodrome — or putting the money back into the Future Fund where it came from originally?
Apparently not. The decision was made and communicated to a bewildered city council. Poof. New stadium. Don't worry, be happy.
February 01, 2011
Hamilton Tiger-Cats get their (mostly) new stadium
And it's official: The Hamilton Tiger-Cats will be getting a rebuilt Ivor Wynne Stadium, after the Hamilton city council voted to approve the deal last night, with just hours to spare before a February 1 deadline to get a stadium plan in place or risk losing the 2015 Pan Am Games. A Pan Am announcement is now expected for today.
And what of that $38.6 million funding gap? The council province dealt with that on Sunday, agreeing to kick in an additional $22.5 million to get the deal finalized. (Yeah, I know those numbers aren't the same — apparently the cost estimate was also reduced by $2.5 million, but that still doesn't explain it. Chalk it up to Canadian math.)
The upshot of this denouement? After rejecting earlier stadium plans because they would require additional city funds, Hamilton okayed a deal that would require additional city funds — just not quite as much. The TiCats, meanwhile, will be getting a virtually new stadium virtually free. It's not the worst deal for the public in stadium-subsidy history, but it's not exactly a victory, either — except inasmuch that both the Hamiton city council and I can stop thinking about it quite so much now.
January 26, 2011
Hamilton stadium reno plan has budget gap, too
Those of you who questioned whether there would really be no funding gap for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' stadium renovation plans, give yourself a prize: The latest cost estimates for rebuilding Ivor Wynne Stadium came in at $159.1 million, which leaves a gap of $38.6 million.
Hamilton city councillor Lloyd Ferguson insists to the Hamilton Spectator that the inflated price tag is the result of overly cautious provincial estimators; city recreation director Diane LaPointe-Kay retorts that to rebuild a stadium to Pan Am Games specs adds more costs.
Either way, city officials are now turning to the province for more money — so far Ontario says it will help, but won't issue a "blank cheque." Which leaves the question of why this plan is any better than all the other stadium plans. Also, whether this can possibly all get worked out by that February deadline.
January 13, 2011
Hamilton launches Tiger-Cats stadium renovation study
The Ivor Wynne renovation plan inched ahead yesterday, as the Hamilton city council voted unanimously to conduct a study analyzing the Tiger-Cats' plan by January 24.
Estimates are that the cost of renovation could be covered by the $45 million already committed by the city and $70 million from the Pan Am Games, so at least unlike previous stadium plans, there'd be no funding gap. There are no details about what kind of lease the Tiger-Cats would want, though, which is somewhat worrying — apparently the city of Hamilton has already been subsidizing the team to the tune of $1.3 million a year, so one would hope that would be eliminated in exchange for providing them with a renovated stadium at no cost.
Also unknown: Who'll get the proceeds from naming rights and other sponsorships, if those are sold? As hopefully Hamilton officials already known, a construction funding agreement is a nice start, but the real devil is in the lease details.
January 11, 2011
Tiger-Cats: Let's rebuild Ivor Wynne instead
Another day, another Hamilton Tiger-Cats stadium plan. Just five days after touting a free-for-taxpayers stadium in Burlington, the Ticats owner Bob Young today announced a new plan to rebuild Ivor Wynne stadium in Hamilton instead. Wrote Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina in a letter to the city council:
The Tiger Cats are prepared to sign a lengthy lease with the City to continue to play in a rebuilt stadium on the Ivor Wynne site. The old stadium was originally rejected because of the requirement for about twenty acres to include an adjacent warm-up track as required by Hostco. This configuration was not possible on the available land. When the difficulties over site selection continued to the point where the deadline was looming the Tiger Cat management put all options on the table. In our discussion yesterday afternoon I urged them to give serious consideration to rehabilitation of the old stadium, and a long-term agreement with the City as a show of faith to residents and fans. There was no hesitation by both Bob Young and Scott Mitchell in agreeing to a 20 year lease arrangement, pending details of course.
Pending details, of course. Young told a press conference this morning that building at the Ivor Wynne site could save $100 million in land and infrastructure costs, which would be convenient given that land costs have been the main holdup in any new stadium deal. Not the only holdup, though — there was about a $30 million construction funding gap as well, and neither Young nor Bratina said exactly how much a redone Ivor Wynne would cost. Nor are there any details immediately on whether the Ticats would need to relocate for renovations, though from the sound of it Young may be talking about the kind of phased reconstruction during offseasons that the Boston Red Sox used for Fenway Park.
That said, it's at least promising that Young, instead of drawing a line in the sand, is agreeing to a scaled-down stadium project that avoids having to hit up taxpayers for additional money. Then again, he may not have had much choice: Yesterday Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring all but took his city out of the running for a Ticats, saying, "Burlington is simply not large enough and therefore does not have the financial capacity to lead on this project." And, of course, available Pan Am Games funding is due to expire if not used by February 1. Sometimes, cities have leverage too.
January 06, 2011
Tiger-Cats promise: Burlington stadium won't cost taxpayers a cent
That Burlington stadium plan for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats got a boost yesterday when team officials promised that it wouldn't cost the city anything. And how would they work that, exactly? By estimating construction costs at between $90 and $120 million, down from the $166 million price tag for a stadium in Hamilton; assuming that the Pan Am Games will still kick in $70 million (I had $60 million, but maybe somebody misreported something); adding $30 million in private "investment and capital"; getting free land from a developer who wants to build next to a stadium; and handwaving away the possibility that a $120 million cost would still leave a $20 million budget gap. ("If they need more than that, well, that’s the Ticats challenge," said Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring.)
Burlington would still be on the hook for unspecified "infrastructure" costs, though Goldring insisted that these would be necessary with or without the stadium.
Burlington city councillors still sound pretty skeptical, but if nothing else this gives the new stadium plan some momentum (otherwise known as "headlines") leading into the last few weeks before the Pan Am Games' February 1 deadline. Stay tuned for more exciting plot twists!
December 30, 2010
Can't tell the rejected Tiger-Cats stadium sites without a scorecard
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats owners barely had time to leak the news yesterday that they were considering building a stadium in the neighboring city of Burlington before Burlington elected officials said they hated the idea. With the city already busy paying off a new performing arts center and other improvements, and property taxes already on the rise, several city councillors said they'd be wary of committing to a football stadium as well.
Or, as councillor Jack Dennison memorably put it:
"Our mouths are full. Our constituents agree our mouths are full and we have to stop chewing before we go and stick any more in our mouth."
Still, Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring is expected to commission a report on the possibility of building a Tiger-Cats stadium in Burlington, for which a total price tag remains unknown. And if nothing else, it could be scaring some Hamilton pols into reconsidering their rejection of stadium sites in their city: At least one of the nine councillors who opposed the Confederation Park site, says he could change his vote at the next council hearing on January 12. Stadium deals are never over till they're over...
December 23, 2010
Hamilton council rejects both Tiger-Cats stadium sites
The Hamitlon Tiger-Cats stadium plan just gets deader and deader: The Hamilton city council met yesterday, and not only rejected the overly pricey Canadian Pacific Railway site, but also the Confederation Park site that was supposed to be the cheaper alternative:
Council shot down a motion from Mayor Bob Bratina to investigate the location at an emergency meeting Wednesday morning. He proposed that staff bring a 'preliminary progress report' back to council by Jan. 14.
The majority of council disagreed with the mayor, arguing that Confederation Park was important green space, that the city was tired of the ongoing debate, and that staff don't have enough time to come up with an accurate analysis by mid-January.
"We're asking our staff to do an impossible job in a very short amount of time," said Councillor Terry Whitehead. "Therefore we will be making a decision based on incomplete information."
The odds of getting a stadium approved in time for the Pan Am Games deadline of February 1 just went from slim to virtually none, which would blow an additional $60 million hole in the stadium budget. (Though the Games organizers could conceivably extend the deadline, as they've done before.) As for what happens next, I'd lay my money on more veiled move threats, followed by more mad scrambling to find a suitable site, followed by more mad scrambling to figure out how to pay for the whole thing. Lather, rinse, repeat.
December 21, 2010
Tiger-Cats stadium site too pricey, says Hamilton mayor
So much for the power of excitement. Newly elected Hamilton mayor Bob Bratina revealed yesterday that the plot of land identified as the best compromise location for a Hamilton Tiger-Cats stadium would cost $70-90 million, adding: "I've called a special council meeting [for Wednesday] and we will determine whether there is any point in continuing to pursue that particular site and my guess would be, in view of the high cost, no."
Bratina had previously estimated the stadium funding gap, which includes at least $30 million in actual construction costs to be paid for by Not Me, at $53 million; the new land price tag would push that figure to at least $100 million. None of this should be any surprise — city councillors were already skeptical that the plan was affordable — but it certainly throws a wrench into getting a new stadium approved by the Pan Am Games' February deadline.
Bratina indicated that he'll now look to build a stadium in Confederation Park, a public park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Pros: The city already owns it. Cons: It's already in use, as a public park. Haven't we been through this before?
November 11, 2010
Tiger-Cats stadium plan now has hotel, $53m in red ink
After promising an announcement yesterday to provide details of a plan to build a hotel, conference center centre, and townhouses alongside their perpetually planned new stadium, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats owners announced ... that they plan to build a hotel, conference centre, and townhouses. Any other details, if they were supplied, didn't make it into the Canadian media coverage.
In any case, the prime holdup in the Ticats stadium saga remains, which is that $30-million-plus-whatever-the-stadium-land-costs funding gap in the project. Local elected officials, to their credit, seem to be mostly keeping their eyes on the prize:
"Pretty pictures don't excite me anymore," said city councillor Brad Clark. "I need to know where the money is."
Echoed fellow councillor Russ Powers: "Where's the beef?"
And another member of city council, Terry Whitehead, added: "Is it smoke and mirrors?"
Hamilton Mayor-elect Bob Bratina, meanwhile, said he hoped that "excitement" over the development plans announced yesterday would convince either public or private sources to cough up enough money to fill the funding gap, which he estimated at $53 million. And if that doesn't work, maybe the Ticats could pay some Canadians to act excited for them.
October 13, 2010
Tiger-Cats stadium deadline pushed back to February
I know I've said that stadium deadlines are made to be broken, but the one in the Hamilton Tiger-Cats stadium standoff is getting ridiculous:
The City of Hamilton and the Ticats have been given yet another deadline extension as they attempt to craft a business plan for a new stadium, which is slated to be used as a soccer venue during the 2015 Pan Am Games. The Ticats have said it is crucial they get a new home — to replace the aging Ivor Wynne Stadium — if they are to remain in the city.
Ian Troop, the head of the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games organizing committee, had earlier said the city and Ticats needed to have a firm business plan for the stadium in place by this week. But considering the progress being made, Troop is now willing to set a new "absolute and final deadline" of Feb. 1, 2011.
"Progress being made" notwithstanding, the time is needed, writes the Montreal Gazette, to fill a "huge budget shortfall" that remains for the $166 million stadium plan: In addition to a $30 million gap in construction costs, no one has offered to pay the cost of buying land for the stadium (the Ticats owners say they'd buy land around it for development, which isn't the same thing). And no one knows how much that land will cost — just one of a lot of unanswered questions about the stadium proposal.
I'd like to hope that they'll all be answered by February, but sadly, history tells us otherwise.
September 30, 2010
Reports of Hamilton stadium's death greatly exaggerated
Stop the presses! The Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the city of Hamilton have done what was thought to be impossible: agreed on a site for a new stadium. Yesterday the two warring factions announced an agreement in principle to build a new stadium on railyards in Hamilton's west end, with the Tiger-Cats to chip in toward the land's purchase price to build "an entertainment/sports precinct."
Now all they need to do s figure out how to pay for it. Even with cash from the federal government for using the stadium for the 2015 Pan Am Games, there is by all accounts a $25-50 million shortfall, plus the cost of buying and remediating the stadium land itself. (The Tiger-Cats owners apparently are only interested in helping pay for land that they can develop themselves.) And that's for what Hamilton city manager Chris Murray calls a "utilitarian" stadium seating 22,000, which is 3,000 fewer seats than the CFL normally requires.
The Hamilton Spectator also reports that the TiCats are "proposing to manage the stadium for the city while using revenue from naming rights and ticket surcharges to offset operating costs." Which might not be that great a deal — depending on how the revenues from the place works, Hamilton may be better off running the place itself (or hiring an independent arena manager) and keeping the revenues. But compared to many U.S. stadium deals, where the private tenant just naturally assumes that naming rights money to a publicly funded stadium is theirs to begin with, this is at least a better starting point for talks. It truly is another country.
September 01, 2010
Hamilton mulling third site for Tiger-Cats stadium
See, I told you that Hamilton Tiger-Cats stadium deadline wasn't really a deadline:
Hamilton city council held a special meeting Tuesday and voted 13-2 to look at a new possible compromise location in the city's west end.
"We are acutely aware that this new direction may be (the) last opportunity to kick-start a stadium in Hamilton," Pan Am Games Organizing Committee chief executive officer Ian Troop said in a statement. "Our venue development work for the stadium is hard up against an immovable deadline for test events in 2014. It is critical to have the City of Hamilton and the Tiger-Cats committing to a co-operative partnership with a concrete plan presented to city council on Sept. 14."
The "compromise" location is one that emerged in the last week or so: the so-called Longwood site in Hamilton's west end, which Ticats owner Bob Young praised in a letter to Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger on Monday as meeting "the essential sports stadium requirements."
Eisenberger told the National Post that he's "not confident at all" that a deal will be struck in the next two weeks, and that "there's going to have to be an awful lot of work done . . . nobody should jump to the conclusion that this is a slam drunk." (Sic — unless that's some Canadianism I haven't heard.) The big question appears to be how "concrete" the plan will need to be by then to make the Pan Am Games folks happy; if "we've agreed to focus on the new site, but don't know how much it'll cost or how it'll be paid for" is enough, clearly that's easier to accomplish in two weeks than an actual fleshed-out plan.
August 12, 2010
Tiger-Cats to Hamilton: We don't want your stinking downtown stadium
The Hamilton city council stuck to its guns Tuesday night, voting 12-3 to approve the downtown West Harbour site for a stadium for the 2015 Pan Am Games and, if they choose to accept it, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Early signs are that accepting it is not going to be happening:
- Even before the vote, Ticats owner Bob Young announced he was pulling out of stadium talks. Yesterday, Young told a Toronto sports radio station: "We think it's a massive mistake and may end the Ticats in Hamilton. We can't continue to lose millions of dollars a year." He added that there's no deal in place to move the team to Quebec City "that I'm aware of," and said, "I'm looking forward to someone coming up with a solution for this because the way this thing is playing out is very scary for the future of Hamilton Tiger-Cat franchise."
- "Hamilton Tiger-Cat legend Angelo 'King Kong' Mosca," according to the Toronto Sun, is hopping mad, and called the mayor "full of shit." (Unless "sh.." stands for something else in Canada. Full of shite?) Along the same lines, the Hamilton Spectator's reporter posted on his newspaper's blog the night of the vote: "There will be no official response from Ticats tonight on council vote. I'd publish the unofficial reaction but this blog is still affiliated with a family newspaper."
- CFL commissioner Mark Cohon, unsurprisingly, has backed Young in the dispute, though rather than rattling the move threat saber as some U.S. commissioners are fond of doing, he seems to be angling for coming up with a new stadium plan that will make everybody happy: "We're talking about a 141 years of history with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. This is not going to be resolved in one or two days. We need to step back and understand that there are a lot more things that have to take place in the coming weeks and months."
- Mayor Fred Eisenberger seemed to leave the door open to coming up with a new plan, calling the vote "bittersweet," and saying, "I don't think it is a victory until we have a stadium where we can get the Tiger-Cats to play ... as well. ... We'll do our best to encourage them to come back to the table and talk about how we can make it work."
Add in that Hamilton might not even get to host part of the Pan Am Games even with a West Harbour stadium, and it sounds increasingly like everyone's going to retreat to their corners and figure out how to start discussions from scratch a couple of months down the road. Not that that's going to stop the scare headlines in the meantime.
August 09, 2010
Hamilton council to decide on stadium site, unless it doesn't
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats saga lurches ahead, as an end-of-the-week deadline nears for picking sites for the 2015 Pan Am Games:
- After two Ontario legislators said that the provincial government wouldn't help fund a stadium at the city's preferred downtown site, other provincial and federal legislators insisted nuh-uh, funding will go to whatever site the city chooses.
- The Hamilton city council is set to vote tomorrow on both stadium sites, but several councillors say they don't have enough information, according to the Hamilton Spectator: "Councillors Lloyd Ferguson and Bob Bratina say the issue remains unclear on what will happen to the funding if council supports the west harbour. They also note there are no answers to a staff report saying the east Mountain stadium would cost taxpayers between $55 million and $80 million more than the west harbour site."
- Ti-Cats fans are split on which site they prefer, but most don't buy the threat that the team will leave: "People leave when they have somewhere to go," one told the Spectator, while another argued: "I don't think they would leave because Hamilton is better in Hamilton." Tough to argue with that.
August 04, 2010
CFL commissioner: If you don't take care of Tiger-Cats, we're not getting you a new one
Hey, looky thar, I missed another sports league commissioner ultimatum last week:
CFL commissioner Mark Cohon is warning that if the Tiger-Cats leave the city over the location of the proposed Pan Am stadium, "it will be the end of the CFL in Hamilton."
Cohon's dire statement is included in a three-page letter he sent to city councillors late yesterday in which he urges them to reject placing the stadium at the west harbour and to back the Tiger-Cats' desire to have the stadium built on the east Mountain. ...
"I understand that there are those who assume that, if the Tiger-Cats under Bob Young's ownership were to leave the city of Hamilton for any reason, our league would be certain to grant the city another franchise by way of expansion," Cohon writes.
"I do not support that type of thinking nor would our board. In fact, I am deeply concerned that should this issue force the Tiger-Cats to leave the city, it will be the end of the CFL in Hamilton."
What's going on here, for those of you who don't follow Canadian football (or as they call it in Canada, "football"), is that the city of Hamilton has agreed to build a new stadium for the Tiger-Cats, but wants to do so at a downtown site. The Tiger-Cats owners prefer a site in the suburbs, where there's more room for parking and, crucially, other development to go alongside the stadium.
All this would just amount to your usual team-vs.-city standoff, except that there's an August 12 deadline to decide on a site for the stadium, or else risk losing Hamilton's share of the 2015 Pan Am Games — which comes with $60 million in federal and provincial funding (or as they call it in Canada, "$60 million"). Hence the threats from Cohon, who's trying to scare the Hamilton city council into agreeing to the team's preferred site by brandishing the threat of a move, possibly to the new stadium in Ottawa. (Which got preliminary approval back in June. Did I forget to mention that at the time? My bad.)
Most observers seem to assume that the whole plan will crash and burn as the standoff continues, but you never know with these things. We'll know more after August 12 — or not, given that the Pan Am Games have already extended their deadline once already.
July 07, 2010
Oilers' talks with Hamilton get curiouser and curiouser
Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz' game of footsie with Hamilton, Ontario has continued over the past week, though it remains hard to say where it's all headed. Recent developments, in rough order of importance:
- The Hamilton Spectator reports that Katz is working on a memorandum of understanding with the city to get exclusive rights to bring an NHL team there for four years, at which point, if no team had materialized, he would pay the city of Hamilton $1 million. (Which, even in newly appreciated Canadian dollars, would be pretty much chump change.)
- Oilers president Patrick LaForge, however, notes that NHL bylaws prohibit owning an interest in more than one team. And while that would seem to imply a threat to move (or sell) the Oilers, he says that's not in the works either, and that Katz only wants to manage the arena in Hamilton, not put an NHL team there.
- NHL commissioner Bill Daly insists that Katz won't be working to help Hamilton get a new NHL franchise, either. Hamilton city council member Bob Bratina, meanwhile, who was in on the talks with Katz, says his proposal wasn't actually anything formal, adding: "Frankly, the whole thing is very obscure, lacks detail and in some cases doesn’t make sense."
- At least one Edmonton city councillor notes that the timing of all these rumors — sorry, rumours — is pretty convenient, given that Katz is in the middle of a currently stalled new-arena negotiation process in Edmonton.
- LaForge admits that the timing of the Hamilton talks was, and this is a direct quote, "shitty." Edmonton city councillors are now, and this is in my own words, pissy, with councillor Ben Henderson warning, "There are all kinds of people who were fully on board with the arena two or three months ago, who are now asking all kinds of questions."
- The Hamilton Tiger-Cats, meanwhile, are moving ahead with plans for a new stadium, for which they say they'll pay "in excess of $74,000,000.00." The breakdown, however, is only $15 million in cash, plus $3 million a year in operating costs for ten years (which is present dollars is closer to $20 million than $30 million), $10 million in "transition costs," and $14 million "to bring two Grey Cup Games to Hamilton as soon as possible." So the vast majority of the cost of a new football stadium would still need to be raised elsewhere. A decision needs to be made by tomorrow if the new stadium will have a shot at hosting part of the 2015 Pan Am Games.
So where does all that leave us? About where we were last week: Either Katz is trying to increase pressure on Edmonton to approve his arena plans, or he wants to grab control of the Tiger-Cats' new stadium (or the TiCats themselves), or he just really, really likes running arenas. And as for the "shitty" timing, it's equally hard to say whether that's a genuinely ham-fisted move or just a cover story for the fact that he meant to do all this to up the ante on either an Edmonton arena, a Hamilton stadium, or both. It's so hard to tell the difference between incompetence and malfeasance...