Pan-Am patsies

Our Pan American Games legacy can be described with one word, zilch.

For the first and only time I’m sure, I agree with a comment from Councilor Brad Clark who opined that only the Hamilton Tiger Cats had benefited from 18 months of debate and complete indecision on the City of Hamilton’s part. What exactly has Hamilton obtained through this process you might ask?

A new but smaller stadium on a tired and still divisive site in the middle of a residential neighborhood is the answer. Indeed you were supposed to get a renovated/rebuilt stadium at Ivor Wynne but arbitrarily along the way in someone’s back room a decision was made to tear down everything and start afresh. Can you tell me what the collateral benefits are for the neighborhood and the city as a whole by rebuilding at Ivor Wynne? I didn’t think so because there are none. No new businesses will be created because we are using the same old food print as before. Indeed fewer people will be attending Tiger Cats football games so even the people who park cars on their lawns and  then complain about patrons urinating on their bushes will have fewer dollars in their collective pockets.

Bob Young is a beneficiary. By stamping his foot and threatening to move to anywhere but the West Harbour he got his way.

What did we the taxpayer get, or lose as it were?

We don’t get a brand new stadium in a West Harbour location that would have linked our needy downtown to our brilliant and green west harbor.

We don’t get industrial revolution lands cleared and cleaned.

We don’t receive any kind of ripple economic effect for the money to be spent by three levels of government.

We don’t get any urban renewal momentum.

And now that there is no velodrome project what sporting infrastructure and legacy will there be from the Pan Am games in Hamilton? Like I said before, zilch.

Oh wait there is one thing we’ve accrued after this testy and sometimes acrimonious debate and that is a reputation elsewhere in the county that we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing going forward. There was another way. Sadly that way has passed us by.

post number one; Doug Farraway.

P.S.

Going forward I will be writing on issues that impact my community, Hamilton. November 21st 2011