On December 7, 2010, Grant MacDonald, addressed the Halifax city council. MacDonald is the director of Major Events & Community Partnerships at Trade Centre Limited, the provincial crown corporation that has expertise in major sporting and concert events, and council had asked MacDonald to research the possibility of the city bidding on the opportunity to become one of the Canadian Soccer Association’s host cities of the 2015 FIFA women’s world cup. In order to successfully win the bid, the city would need to commit to building a stadium.
MacDonald, the public official in Nova Scotia with the most knowledge and expertise with hosting sporting events, had one piece of advice: Don’t do it. “Based on timing constraints, Halifax [should] notify CSA that it will not continue as a Candidate Bid City,” reads MacDonald’s report to council. “Timelines do not allow for proper due diligence on venue feasibility, public input or funding partnerships.”
Council, however, rejected that expert advice, and voted to chase the bid, and the stadium. It would go on to form a committee to research the possibility of a stadium, and keep anyone who at all questioned a stadium off the committee. It would spend $93,000 for a stadium study, then $275,000 for a second stadium study. It would authorize $100,000 worth of staff time for chasing the stadium. And now, 15 months and nearly half a million dollars later, council voted Tuesday 22-1 that, yep, sure enough, just as MacDonald had predicted, a stadium is too iffy of a project at this time, and there’s no chance of any funding partnerships for the FIFA bid. The stadium dream is dead.
There’s a polite fiction that the stadium studies can be brushed off and used for some future stadium that will one day magically appear at Shannon Park, but at least one councillor called bullshit on that notion. “That’s just a fig leaf used to justify the expense of the studies,” said councillor Jackie Barkhouse Tuesday.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2012.
It seems like they’re pulling their Smart Caps out now that an election is staring at them. Too late.
I would love to know the ratio of ad dollars used ,trying to whip up attendance for the public meetings at the Forum meeting room and Fennell, to actual attendees. I counted 32 persons standing in favor of the Stadium on Streaming Video at the end of the last meeting. I seem to recall blocks of radio ads on News 95.7 that probably out numbered attendees .
Waste of money. I have yet to hear any plausible reason for such a stadium. Another example of a small group of people and steady persistence in promoting an agenda for a white elephant. Same as the crowd who promoted pissing away $10,000,000 on the Seaport Market
The arts crowd will be along some time promoting an opera house, art gallery, orchestral hall.
Just use the word ‘iconic’ and a few fools downtown go all wobbly. All these spending ideas should be subject to a plebiscite.
Joeblow it is pretty apparent that parties in Nova Scotia and ex pats driving this stadium thing are out of touch with the reality of the HRM and Provinces financial position. The City was talking of borrowing the 20 million to be paid back over 20 years. Cost in the end 34 million dollars. Considering the Skydome went from a construction cost of 650 million dollars to a selling price to Ted Rogers of 25 million in less then 15 years one has to ask are we that insecure with ourselves that we want to throw ourselves at a bonfire burning our money? Then on top of the 20 million borrowed would be no tenant supporting the stadium and maintanence and insurance costs of a million a year probably. At the end you would have paid 54 million for a stadium for the HRM share that would have netted you a place with no buyer except for a case like Pontiac Michigan where the Silverdome that hosted the Detroit Lions sold in 2009 for 550,000 dollars . The maintenance costs and insurance on an empty stadium was bankrupting the suburban city of Detroit. Every potential sport team owner know that they hold the high hand with civil owned venues. Moncton with a Stadium on the Ground would be played off against HRM if a Stadium was to be built on Speculation. An Apartment or Condo Development is way different and hence why you see developers involved with they own equity involved. Everyone needs a place to live No one needs an entertainment venue to survive.
How the holy fuck did they ever manage to get the Metro Centre built in this city??? I couldn’t imagine the types of events we’d be hosting if all we had is the old Halifax Forum. Hey Halifax – The BIG picture is calling – please answer!
Reality is that it is shameful that a city the size of Halifax has no outdoor sports venue besides the crumbling Huskies Stadium (what a laugh of a name) that is down to about 3000 capacity now with the sections that have been deemed unsafe for occupancy. We don’t need a Rogers Center, but we do need a stadium. As for the”can’t afford it” argument, Council is spending over $50 million on a palatial designer library and spent about half that on a 4-pad arena out in the boonies, along with $15 million on that hipster’s delight of a skating oval on the Common. The money seems to be there. They need to get their act together and provide such a venue, though hopefully not in the shithole of Shannon Park.
Actually, Bo, what would have been shameful would have been for a city of this size not to have a modern central library. I suspect what you really mean by “palatial designer” is that you can’t comprehend why anyone would really want to spend time at a library. It’s apples and oranges, I don’t know why you even brought it up.
Mentioning the 4-Pad or Oval is appropriate, they are all sports and recreational facilities. So let’s consider a stadium. So why exactly do we need one, as a city? Can you articulate that? We need one ’cause we need one isn’t a great reason. Outdoor sports venue? For what? You know how many dozens and dozens of baseball diamonds and soccer fields we have now? So it can’t be for that, is it for our CFL team? As for how many people you think you’d pack into any hypothetical regularly scheduled sport, consider the average attendance at QMJHL or NBL games, and that’s indoors – you think you’d do nearly as well with outdoors? There’s be certainly less gate to defray costs, so back to us taxpayers.
And what’s with the dig at Shannon Park? That’s actually one of the better locations if you were to do this thing: a lot of cities would kill to have options like that.
Realist good take on this. The problem I have with a stadium is there is no illustrated need for one considering you have a Huskies stadium that has run into such disrepair simply as revenues did not make it a priority of the university that owns it. St Marys is putting up a new office building at the corner of Tower and Inglis that will be 15 million dollars. St Marys in the press release Friday stated that they have built about 100 million in buildings in the last decade . Where was maintenance money or revenues from Huskie stadium if this was such a great idea ? The FRank Sobeys School of Business apparently didn’t see the great leap forward the Stadium zealiots of the HRM see. Gee for that matter neither did 23 councilors, HRM staff , three family enterprises valued in the Billions in Atlantic Canada. The provincial and federal government. The need would be illustrated like the case of Green Bay Wiscousin or Regina where football fans take their own money and build both a team and a stadium appointed a board to run business operations. In the case of Green Bay the last stock offering was full bought bringing in 200 million in December 2011. Don Mills poll about preferring a stadium as opposed to a convention centre. I wonder how he shaped that for his favorite hobby for pushing for a stadium. Would you prefer a stadium if it did not raise your taxes and a Stadium they will sell beer? Hopefully this closes the door on any government level making a stadium effort because basically we are talking of subsidizing someones hobby that would only occur 10 regular season games and the 32 people who showed up at fennel hall to support a stadium will probably be dead by the time one is built here. No biggie it just means Mr Mackay doesnt have a concert venue with permanant stands