Raise the Hammer

I can't comment on other situations but for someone thats been going to ticat games and watching them since 1973 i know his objections with the harbor site is coming from what "experts" are telling him. Owners and "experts" can go on all day about business models all this gibberish, all the forecast projections all the want..but they just dont really know what would happen at the harbor location. It can't be said now (as far as crowds go) but there was a time when the rogers center (skydome) was full every night for the blue jays with 2 years having the highest attendance in baseball. The argos were getting in the 30-40 thousand range and i went to some of these games. I can remember getting out of union station and you had to walk through that large indoor walk way between there and the dome and thousands of people did. You had a long walk to the get into the stadium and if you were in the upper level you had to go in circle in the walkway to the higher levels. That im sure was a good 3-4 block walk...and people did it. If you add in the fact that people take transit (and alot of people around just walk there)..you aren't really talking about alot of cars..not as much as he seems to think. It might be fine to say 80% of the fans are coming in cars...but they arent coming individually last time i checked!. With a sold out stadium at its location currently, usually labor day its not that hard to get out. Part of that reason is some people walk/take the bus but another reason is because the parking is spread out and not in one location. Is there anywhere in canada that has a parking lot for 7,000 cars for a stadium?..Something interesting to note the cfl team with typically the biggest crowds "edmonton" states this on their website. PARKING "Please be aware that there is no public parking available at Commonwealth Stadium or in surrounding neighbourhoods (City of Edmonton Bylaw #5590 in effect)....i seen some parking across the street and it isn't much...so i still think this parking talk is just bull, it's a easy way to get $15-20 per car as a simple way of increasing the ticket price...without changing the number on the ticket. There is enough parking downtown he just knows its impossible to get all that revenue if people have a choice where to park. He is losing money because he's lost almost 70% of the games since he owned them (7 years). Right or wrong that was on his watch and for the most part he can't run a team. I just find it amazing a few yrs ago the blackberry co-owner was considering having a nhl team blocks away from this harbor stadium and bob young says it cant work its bizarre. There isn't a huge parking lot at copps either and when it's sold out and the immediate area with the mall,library, farmers market attached you have easily 25,000 people. The montreal stadium proves this is just all fabricated nonsense on his part.