Raise the Hammer

At the Special GIC meeting on Aug 29/11, Mayor Bratina talked about selling the west harbour lands for $10 Million...

...because there is a queue to purchase.

Let’s say the city decides to do the capping method of remediation and build the stadium and velodrome at the west harbour within the next four years creating one of Canada‘s more impressive public spaces stretching from Bayfront Park through Pan Am Park through Central Park to its southern entrance at Cannon and Caroline Streets

I admire your abilities to imagine 'What Might Have Been'. (My own meanderings have the entire industrial strip gone, and the creation of one of the world's most amazing waterfronts taking its place) But with the Ti-Cats as the primary legacy tenant, this ain't gonna happen.

The Ivor Wynne Stadium site has a deep history and many great memories attached to it. But there is an absence of common sense in commissioning a world-class architectural and construction team to build a $152.5 Million stadium on a site that has houses 50 feet away from it on three of its four sides.

This really isn't the issue.

The Pan Am opportunity gives Hamilton a once in a lifetime chance for a team of world-class architects and builders to transform the west harbour area into the one of the great urban public spaces in Canada. Let’s allow them to do it.

I feel like this is a case of déja vu. Weren't we here last year?

Both efforts...the stadium and velodrome...got co-opted. The former by the Ti-Cats, the latter by Mohawk College.

Great leadership requires making cogent decisions based on a solid vision...and sticking to them. (And if it's necessary to walk away from the table...then you walk.) Clearly, we haven't seen 'great leadership' from either this Council...or the last. 'Something's rotten in the state of Denmark', and all that.

Someone elsewhere said it well:

"When you have no target, everything looks like one."