[dowlingm]

If a stadium was built on the islands it should be a small baseball park as near as possible to the former Hanlan's Point site to cash in on the Babe Ruth connection

 

[isaidso]

The only way this could possibly happen is if they expected to bring an NFL team to it or it's part of a successful Olympic/World Cup bid.

I'm just not convinced that Toronto is a football town of any variety any more. It's not just Canadian football (and the CFL) that is in decline, but football period. The entire sport is in trouble in this city. Football fields don't get built in Toronto, they get ripped up and replaced with soccer pitches. Kids don't play in high school and they don't grow up going to games. You've got 2 generations of Torontonians that view football as a strange foreign curiosity despite our city being one of the cities that gave birth to the sport.

People are fooling themselves if they think a change of league and going from 3 downs to 4 downs is going to turn Torontonians on to football. It might for a few months, but when the hype wears off people here will realize they're just not into this sport. They'd rather go watch soccer, basketball, baseball... even the Leafs.

Toronto is the least football friendly city in Canada/US. Even Americans like Canadian football more than Torontonians. The Twitter feed and response on ESPN and NBCSN to the CFL by Americans is overwhelmingly positive. They love our league and the sport.

 

[asdda]

Sports leagues are all about stars nowadays. That is what killed the CFL in Toronto.

Look at this mob of fans for Carmelo:

http://www.beyondthebuzzer.com/2013/10/24/carmelo-anthony-dances-mob-fans-practice/

He isn't even a Raptor.

Do you think one player from the Argos could get that reaction. Do you think anyone is recognizing Ricky Ray?

A NFL team would easily be popular in Toronto and it has nothing to do with football. It has to do with stars.

 

[themarc]

Well of course they would hope that the seats are regularly filled, bringing in additional revenue. Speaking for myself, I would build a "bare-bones" open-air stadium (no dome) seating 10-15 thousand people, built with room for expansion to as many as 25-40 thousand people if attendance warrants it. I don't know how much this would cost, but it would surely be less than the billion dollars ($700 million from Avcom Investments and another $300 million from unspecified other investors) that the pictured design and the land it sits on would cost. Maybe one-tenth that amount, not counting land costs?

If it turns out that their attendance projections are correct, and hold up for more than a few years, then at that point, building a stadium to this design might be justified.

The idea for the island was to build the facility as a "natural" (landscaped) amphitheater - think like the old Forum at Ontario Place. Bare bones essentially - but the pitch built to ICC standards - with tiered picnic areas that could be converted to hold smaller grandstands (think Indy style temp seating) for major events. This sort of concept can be done in a lot of city parks. Christie Pits comes to mind as does converting Dentonia Park from a golf course to a city park (as was suggested by Soknacki).

 

[Northern Magus]

From the Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...ket_stadium_has_history_of_legal_trouble.html

AoD

Yep, to me this is looking very shaky now, which is too bad. The market is probably there for cricket, but when someone with this kind of history is running things potential investors might get very nervous. But I sure would like to be wrong.

As for locations, I think you're stuck with the portlands or Downsview purely because of transit connections. Otherwise Mississauga or the Pearson area simply because Brampton has too little transit and too much road congestion already.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

As for locations, I think you're stuck with the portlands or Downsview purely because of transit connections. Otherwise Mississauga or the Pearson area simply because Brampton has too little transit and too much road congestion already.

Hands off the Portlands - WT is doing just fine on that file. Downsview might not be a bad choice, considering transit access and relative proximity to the cricket demographic.

AoD

 

[TOareaFan]

Hands off the Portlands - WT is doing just fine on that file. Downsview might not be a bad choice, considering transit access and relative proximity to the cricket demographic.

AoD

There are a lot of Aussies and upper class English in Downsview?

 

[TOareaFan]

Yep, to me this is looking very shaky now, which is too bad. The market is probably there for cricket, but when someone with this kind of history is running things potential investors might get very nervous. But I sure would like to be wrong.

As for locations, I think you're stuck with the portlands or Downsview purely because of transit connections. Otherwise Mississauga or the Pearson area simply because Brampton has too little transit and too much road congestion already.

Just out of curiosity....where in Mississauga (other than on the Lakeshore line which I do not think has an available site) or around Pearson are the transit links superior to Brampton? All suburban areas (again not including the Lakeshore) are served by buses...GO and local....so if that does not count as transit links...then it has to be in the city (not that it will be built anywhere).

 

[Big Daddy]

Just out of curiosity....where in Mississauga (other than on the Lakeshore line which I do not think has an available site) or around Pearson are the transit links superior to Brampton? All suburban areas (again not including the Lakeshore) are served by buses...GO and local....so if that does not count as transit links...then it has to be in the city (not that it will be built anywhere).

True, most Torontonians think of Mississauga as a vast area of potential development - but in fact it is built out - virtually wall to wall - so I don't know where such a facility would go.

And transit in Mississauga sucks. Everything terminates at Square One but Square One isn't linked to anything by serious transit - just GO Buses. You would think Metrolinx would have tried to connect the city of Mississauga (roughly this population of Edmonton) to its network of transit improvements but not so. So the idea of getting thousands of fans to Mississauga by transit is just talk.

There must be a site they are really pushing for in Toronto - likely downsview, if there is space left for it.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

There are a lot of Aussies and upper class English in Downsview?

There aren't a lot of Aussies anywhere, and Downsview is certainly closer for the North Toronto crowd than anywhere in the Portlands. Maybe that's why we need the North York Relief Line? Har.

AoD

 

[TOareaFan]

There aren't a lot of Aussies anywhere, and Downsview is certainly closer for the North Toronto crowd than anywhere in the Portlands. Maybe that's why we need the North York Relief Line? Har.

AoD

A private subway connecting 141 Wilson to Wilson Station would work.

 

[DavidJamesTO]

There are a lot of Aussies and upper class English in Downsview?

You have a very narrow view of the game's audience. The big driver is immigrants from the Caribbean, India, and Pakistan. I was at CCTT a couple of years ago waiting for a GO Bus and someone fitting one of those categories (couldn't tell which) was taking practice swings with his bat.

We've had English people in Canada for centuries; if they were a significant factor in cricket development in Canada, this stadium would have been built decades ago.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Portlands has terrible transit access. Brampton is even worse than Mississauga in terms of transit access. Downsview is probably the best location in terms of transit accibility.

 

[TOareaFan]

You have a very narrow view of the game's audience. The big driver is immigrants from the Caribbean, India, and Pakistan. I was at CCTT a couple of years ago waiting for a GO Bus and someone fitting one of those categories (couldn't tell which) was taking practice swings with his bat.

We've had English people in Canada for centuries; if they were a significant factor in cricket development in Canada, this stadium would have been built decades ago.

Relax....I was making a joke precisely because the general perception around these parts is that cricket is only a sport of the Caribbean and South Asian populations. In the last 2 or 3 years there have been several proposals in Brampton to build cricket stadiums and the local paper got swamped on their comment boards by the small (but very vocal) group of bigots in town who manage to twist everything in town into a "pandering to the South Asian community" issue.

I am well aware of who the big cricket supporters/communities in the GTA but there are some very traditionally waspy Ontarians who support the game too. Like I said above, spend some time at 141 Wilson and you will notice it is not exactly reflective our current population mix.

 

[StatGeek]

From the Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...ket_stadium_has_history_of_legal_trouble.html

AoD

This cricket writer here has really followed the story and the guy pushing the stadium. This quote stood out.

In his capacity as chief executive of Webworx Inc., Singh "through a sophisticated array of paper, faxes, emails and fictional characters, in addition to unseemly acts of ingratiation and self-promotion if not instances of disarming behavior, was able to persuade the executives and employees of i-Trade that Webworx had ongoing and profitable contracts" when in fact no such things existed. Based on false documents through a false identity, Webworx obtained millions in financing from and eventually bankrupted i-Trade. Justice Gans called Singh's behavior in the case as "Machiavellian in the extreme" and said that time in prison would give him a chance to get "treatment for his seeming sociopathic behavior."

The writer of the article has a twitter @PeterDellaPenna. If you look through his tweets of July 10 he talked in detail of the absurdity of this stadium and how recently shady people have been pushing unrealistic cricket stadiums to N.American cities. Some interesting tweets from the writers on July 10. Everybody who replied to him agreed the idea seems ridiculous and mocked how the city mainstream media just repeated the "press release" without fact checking who's behind it.

"An article was published online today about a $700m cricket stadium approved to be built in Canada. If it sounds absurd, it's because it is."
""You know how the $6m Indianapolis and $70m Florida cricket stadiums failed. Let's do a $700m one in Canada! I swear it'll work this time!"
""The proposed stadium, which does not yet have a confirmed location nor publicly revealed backers." Did I mention I'm also selling bridges?"
"So... ahem... it appears those comparisons to Allen Stanford with this Canadian cricket stadium might not be too far from the truth..." (google Allen Stanford, yikes)