End the stadium shell game

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/09/2010 (5535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you think you know what your football stadium is going to look like, you’re wrong.

If you think you know when your football stadium will be complete, you’re wrong.

If you think you know much at all about your football stadium, sadly, my friend, you’re wrong.

The time for backroom deals and late-night negotiations behind closed doors is over. As taxpayers, and we hate playing this card, it’s time to demand transparency.

Tenders and final numbers for stadium construction are due any day and the decisions on how to proceed with the proposed project are set to follow.

The stakeholders in this project — Creswin, the University of Manitoba, the province, the city and the Blue Bombers — have made all the calls to this point and, frankly, haven’t done much of a job.

Uncertainty and a lack of harmony are the hallmarks of this task force.

They need to make public the numbers and the reasoning behind decisions regarding the shaping of the stadium. Anything less is unacceptable.

As taxpayers, this is our house, but we’re all crowded into one room with the lights turned off. Time to open the door and let us see for ourselves what we’re buying.

The building of a new football stadium at the U of M for use by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and U of M Bisons is a fine idea and one that should go forward and supply this community with the type of gathering place it deserves.

Entire bill

We’ve got no problem, for that matter, with footing the entire bill. It’s part and parcel with being a major city in Canada. Winnipeg needs a hockey rink, a symphony hall and a football stadium. If not, we’re just a bunch of people with similar postal codes. We’re not a community and a place where sport and culture binds us together to make us one.

It goes to quality of life and with the disadvantages created by our geographical situation, we need to stimulate other sources of community pride. Ballet, art galleries and a football team with an 80-year history are some of those things that make us Winnipeggers and glad for it.

Do we need a new stadium? Clearly. Thankfully, David Asper has pushed to make that happen. Without his vision and his drive, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

But all his hard work is now at risk. Maybe it’s his fault, maybe it’s that of the Bombers’ board of directors, maybe it’s the politicians. Don’t know, don’t care.

The bottom line is that in the next couple of weeks, decisions will be made about the future of where we watch football games for the next 50 years. And we need to take part in that process.

Creswin officials have gone on the record as saying the construction firm will build a stadium that costs about $115 million. That’s the only certainty from their end.

It’s a popular myth that the only segment of the proposed stadium at risk is the overhead canopy. What if even cutting the canopy leaves construction costs in the $130-million range? Then something else will have to go in order for Creswin to do what they say they will do: deliver a stadium for $115 million.

Creswin is not about to dig into its own pockets for $15 million. They’ve already said they won’t. So don’t give us this baloney about the canopy being the only thing in line for cutting.

We’ve also been told there’s a chance that no alterations will be needed in order to come in close to $115 million.

Like we said, no one knows what this thing is going to look like or when it’s going to be finished. We put the cart way before the horse on this project.

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To frame this deal as anything other than publicly funded is misleading. The stadium is meant to cost $115 million and our provincial government has pledged to cover $90 million of that.

Yes, there’s a plan where Creswin will turn the land where Canad Inns Stadium sits at Polo Park into a mall and pay back that loan.

But there’s also a provision that says property taxes from new developments at Polo Park will be used to pay down the loan should Creswin be unable to complete its end of the deal.

So right now, it’s our money. And if it’s our money, we should be involved in deciding how our stadium looks and feels.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca