Letter to the Editor, Stoney Creek News

Stoney Creek News reader Leon Sauers' letter in the September 2 issue had me scratching my head at its conclusion:

"A stadium for a city as large as Hamilton having a well-known sports franchise requires a minimum of 30-35,000 seating capacity. To be successful and profitable, in addition to capacity, it requires an easy to and from location with an abundance of parking.

This is not possible at the west harbour site.

The sooner the mayor and majority of council realize this, Young can get the show into a touchdown mode with a simple eeny, meeny, miny, moe."

As L.L. Cool J once opined: "I don't think so."

Mr. Sauers is tangentially known to me, so I have a rough idea of his age. ('older') So this comment wasn't that much of a surprise, because his generation is used to the 'driveway-to-driveway' experience. (Not just for attending sporting events...for everything.)

I hate to be the reminder of bad news, but that world no longer exists.

Um... Allow me to rephrase: that world is no longer being propagated.

When I finally came on-board with the whole 'Where are we going to put this stadium?' discussion, it was pretty clear to me that the decision-making process was a flow-chart.

At the top of the chart, two options:

1) Urban Stadium

2) Suburban Stadium

It's that simple a beginning for this process. (Despite what others may insist is the truth, or that this notion is bunkum. Pfft.)

If you want the stadium to contribute to the 'urban' landscape' (in all ways this approach implies), then you go with an urban location. If you want things like big-box malls to be the ancillary effects, then you go suburban.

If you want public transit to be the default method of getting to the events, and you want to open up attending the stadiums offering to those who may not fall within the 'We Can Afford To Drive A Car' category, you choose urban. If you want the driveway-to-driveway experience...and you're the team owner and want not only the revenue resulting from the 6,000 parking spaces on game days but also all the revenue from all other events held at the stadium because your team is so precariously perched on the precipice of financial viability...then you go suburban.

If you have a conscience regarding the environment...urban. If you're more interested in your needs, getting what you want...suburban.

So the idea that, as Mr. Sauers insists, "...(the stadium) requires an easy to and from location with an abundance of parking..." is just...plain...wrong.

It requires an abundance of parking if that's the way you've approached the decision as to where to locate it. If that's the mindset you're mired in. If you cannot think in any other way than the one you've been thinking in for decades upon decades upon decades.

Now, what's interesting to me is that I do not align myself with those (such as Ryan McGreal, the editor of 'Raise The Hammer'), who insist, spittle flying everywhere, that 'peak oil' and all the concomitant changes attached to these circumstances will soon enough prove the end of the automobile, and therefore, it behooves us to begin making the transition now. (I happen to believe that some form of Personal Transport Vehicles are going to be around for a looooong time; only the fuel and the resultant engine requirements will change. If you seriously believe that people will be willing to forever and ever, Amen sever their attachment to the autonomy and the declaration not only of independence but of identity that a PTV provides...never mind that there's a potential industry there waiting to make the most of this transition away from fossil fuels...well, I'm not sure what to say, honestly.) But I do believe that suburban sprawl sucks the big one, that we need to return to our urban spaces not out of resignation but out of a sense of connecting to our innate urban natures (something that goes back thousands of years), our heritage, that it just makes so much more sense...and that besides; suburban sprawl sucks the-

Oh.

Sorry.

All that talk of aging and of spittle must have had some kind of osmosis effect on me.

Mea culpa.

Anyway, while I did very much enjoy Mr. Sauers' letter...even if it veered like a truck with some steering issues needing to be addressed...this believer in urban stadium locations needed to let his reaction be known.

That's what a 'personal blog' is for, right?