Raise the Hammer

I posted about this on my blog that is usually about art and music. http://www.chrisvalour.com I was pretty mad when I read the article in the spec and couldn't not write something.

Anyways..... This is what I wrote. I am by no means a good writer

First off, I should mention that I am not really a football fan. Secondly, if I was a football fan, I sure as hell wouldn’t be rooting for a the Hamilton Tiger Cats.

Not only are they not a very good team, but for months they have been battling the development of a new stadium in the Hamilton West-Harbour. The West-Harbor location will benefit the city as a whole for years to come, not just the 10 days a year that the Ticats would be playing there.

In a private meeting this morning, Ticats owner Bob Young told a group of Ticats supports (yes, apparently they exist) that the franchise could potentially lose up to $7 million a year if it were forced to relocate to the city-preferred west harbor option, and urged the city to explore other options.

These “options” include the intersection of the QEW and the Red Hill Valley Parkway (near Confederation Park), on the Hamilton side of Aldershot (What the heck does that mean?) and finally Chedoke Park.

I am sure the first two of the three listed options will eventually be developed into Wal-Marts or parking lots in the near future, so building in that area doesn’t really bother me. But the the third option is Chedoke Park.

Chedoke Park is under the protection of the Niagara Escarpment Commission and I don’t understand the logic behind building a stadium and giant parking complex on environmentally sensitive land, for less than 10 games a year.

It seems that the two main concerns of the Ticats are parking and stadium visibility for sponsors.

I don’t really understand the parking issue. I mean half of downtown Hamilton is a parking lot already.

And I don’t mean to stereo-type, but have you seen the average Ticats fan? They could certainly use a short 15 minute walk to the game. And I should add, a good portion of them stumble out of the game and into their 1986 Chevrolet rust buckets, ready to swerve their way home. Is obese drunk driving really something that should be encouraged?

As for visibility for the sponsor…. Buy a billboard on the QEW. Or better yet, sponsor a team that wins a game once in a while.

This shouldn’t even be a consideration. In fact, I am still trying to figure out why this stadium is not by default named something like “Hamilton Pan-Am Place”. We are the ones paying for it, why sell its namesake to some giant company that has nothing to do with the city or the Pan-Am games for a drop in the bucket of its construction costs.

Also, why should the Ticats have any say in where the stadium is located anyways? Are they competing in the Pan-Am games? Are they covering the majority of the construction costs?

If they don’t like it, they should take their ball and go home. They were fine playing in crumbling Ivor Wynne Stadium (which also lacks decent parking and sponsor visibility) until the chance of a heavily subsidised new stadium came into the picture.

Why do the Ticats feel that the city should have to choose from their list of options anyways when the city clearly gave the Ticats two options. Contribute, or build your own stadium. Seems simple to me.