There are people, many people, who would like to see CFL football return to Ottawa. For many football fans, it is difficult to see why others are raising objections to the Lansdowne Live proposal. After all, this is a plan which has been promoted as a means of bringing back football.
But it is worth noting that even if everything goes ahead full steam, there will be no football team on the field until 2013 or 2014. Why is it taking so long?
One reason for the delay is that the Lansdowne Live proposal involves much more than football. For some reason, you cannot have a football team until you have a supermarket, a shopping centre, a multi-screen movie theatre and VIP boxes in the stadium.
If you wanted to establish a football team, would you build a supermarket as your first step?
No, probably the first step would be to look into temporary stands for fans in the existing stadium. It would be nice to replace the seats in the stands, but need that be the first concern?
Similarly, if the idea is to bring professional soccer to Lansdowne, what really needs to be done?
All this is to say that, if football (or soccer) is the objective, there are quicker and surer ways of restoring football than the complexity of the Lansdowne Live proposal.
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I understand the ultimate seating capacity of the new facility for football will be 24,000 fans. I am told that the Montreal Alouette games are held at McGill's stadium and that the size of that faciltiy is comparable, but where the market is more than twice the size. At the same time I understand Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, with twice the fan capacity, are having financial issues.
ReplyDeleteMy interest would be in having some information on the financial viability of a profesional sports team (whether Canandian football or European football) with a stadium capacity of 24,000. What ticket price would be required to pay the cost of the team's operations, separate from the franchise fees.
As well, the cost of traffic management for each game, including the closing of Bank Street from Glebe Avenue to Riverdale has not been documented. City police, on overtime, do not come cheaply. Plus the cost of transporting barricades and so on, would be in addition. Perhaps this cost would be included in the price of a ticket, along with the bus fare, or perhpaps this is a cost the city would "contribute" as its testimony to the partnership agreement. After all, if we do not want to pay the cost, the owners will simply move the team to another city.