Raise the Hammer

Which studies are you referring to? The ones I've read can be found at "www.goeastmountain.com" in the right margin toward the bottom. And don't refer to the opinions and preferences of architects and urban planners as "studies".

So I took a gander at those "studies" on the goeastmountain site, here's what I found:

Study 1) Tiger-Cats Customer Study – Centre For Spatial Economics

• Essentially the opinion of 1 consultant with an economics background, data shows most Ti-Cats fan live outside downtown, most drive and people in downtown Hamilton are all apparently poor.
• This study does not consider the changing dynamics of downtown Hamilton, there has been a significant shift in the past 5-10 years with more affluent young professionals moving into old neighborhoods. This shift is likely to continue as its part of a larger trend across North America towards city living.

Study 2) Summary of City Reports on West Harbour (Prior to 2008)

This is just some unknown person making comments about old city studies of West Harbour locations, some of which cite positive aspects, some negative. The person writing the comments makes highly biased statements and has no measure of objectivity and little analysis.

Study 3) Report of the Facilitator – East Mountain Compromised Site Section Only

• Interesting, but doesn't really provide us anything we don't already know. Ti-Cats fans drive, and ~75% are likely to continue to drive if the stadium is built at WH.

Study 4) North American Stadiums-Arenas Evaluation – NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS

This actually has useful objective data, some highlights:

• 65% of all stadiums have Subway / LRT within 1 km of the stadium
• 80% are located in "high visibility area" which is a highway vantage point OR major downtown core
• 88% have at least 2 lanes both direction route into the stadium
• 68% have 4-5:1 capacity to on-site parking

My comments:

• The WH location, if we got LRT, would be within 1km of the LRT, EM would not
• Both locations are seem to be high visibility by the reports definition
• Both locations have at least 2 lanes in /out (Barton is 2 lanes each way, its just not a "arterial route", but it could easily be made one in that area).
• Both locations have 4:5-1 capacity for parking in the vicinity (off-site in WH's case).

The thing that really irks me about this report, is that they use 1km as some magical delimiter for whether the highway access is sufficient, the 403 is at most about 3km from the WH site and King St is effectively a highway with the light synchronization. There's lots of capacity there. It would have been more useful if they also gave the average distance to a highway.

Study 5) Fan Research and Stadium Survey Results – Hamilton Tiger-Cats

• Most fans attend games for the entertainment!
• 76% of season ticket holders are within a 30 minute drive of IWS
• 46% of single game attendees are within a 30 minute drive
• 74% plan to drive to WH
• 93% of fans expect to walk less than 15 minutes from their parked location (fair enough!)
• fans anticipate being less happy with parking at WH (78% happy versus 57% happy!)
• Washrooms, Concessions and Sightlines are the three most important things for fans at the stadium, parking is 4, weather protection 5 and highway access 6 and almost tied with "in stadium pre-game patio."
• And the kicker (on the very last page)

39% of season ticket holders and 53% of single game ticket purchases would use the GO TRAIN if it went directly to the WH site!

I love this study! So essentially, WH would be totally fine for Tiger Cats fans as long as there's places to go to the washroom and we get the GO-Train to come very close to the stadium. If ~40-50% of the previously driving crew left their cars at home and took the Go Train, the parking problem, congestion issues, etc are COMPLETELY SOLVED.

Study 6) Comparable MLS Stadiums – Size & Location

What I see from this data:

• American MLS stadiums built in the last decade, with the exception of Seattle, Portland and Houston, were built away from downtowns (no surprise given the SUV fad of of 1995-2008)
• Canadian MLS stadiums built/renovated in the last decade were built .... in downtown metropolitan areas! (BMO Field / BC Place are the only examples in the list).
• So we conclude that we're in Canada and so we should build an MLS stadium in a downtown metropolitan area :).

So those studies took a while to look through, but what I can see from them is that the argument against the WH is essentially based upon the spreadsheet of study #4 which has 2 or 3 criteria that have been put down as as "NO" for the WH, which could quite easily be "YES" if the city and Ti-Cats work together. If three are made "YES" then WH is "tied" with "EM" based on that analysis of the criteria. None of the data suggests that the stadium has to be on the East Mountain, in fact 40-50% of fans would take the Go train to the game if it stopped by the WH. The Ti-Cats own survey is the strongest proponent of the West Harbour location with an adjacent rapid transit option.

Comment edited by dsahota on 2010-08-09 02:35:06