CaptainBL
Active Member
Montreal's reuse of the buildings from the Expo 67 is a fantastic example. I love visiting that area, specially the biodome when I am in Montreal.
It requires a thinking cap and nonlazy bureaucrats.
- Thread starter Daveography
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It requires a thinking cap and nonlazy bureaucrats.
Avenuer
Senior Member
If you are right and there is a market for such things than we would be seeing the structure being redeveloped now, but alas.
archited
Senior Member
^^^^ C'mon... the City nixed every viable proposal relying on their knee-deep on-staff "expertise" (my tongue is so far stuck in my cheek that it may cause internal bleeding of the mouth). Nobody on staff has any clue as to what they are doing. A better "solution" in their collective mind(s) is to demo the building for tens of millions of dollars and then sell it off for what... something under 10 Mil. -- that's where CRazY lives!!!
Stevey_G
Active Member
To be fair, most viable redevelopment plans for the coliseum call for something that would compete (in the eyes of Katz group) in some fashion with the downtown arena. That is off the books because of poor negotiations on city's behalf...
I feel that as the city moves towards 2 million people, it'll regret not having older yet affordable venue space. The Coliseum could have easily filled the void that will be filled in our city that Pacific Coliseum currently does in Vancouver. Events like monster jam, road shows, WWE, motocross events. It would also attract headliners the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Deftones, Primus, Godsmack, etc. We would also likely still have our Lacrosse Team.
Cities need those grittier venues which compliment, rather than compete, with the city's primary venue in order to maintain a diverse group of attractions. It's a shame that the city didn't find a way to go back on that part of the deal when Katz group came looking for money to complete the Ice District plaza.
kcantor
Senior Member
pardon me if i disagree with ladouceur's conclusion here.
firstly, i'm in carl elefante's camp when he stated that "the most sustainable building is the one that is already built". in a city that is quite happily embarking on a climate initiatives that will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in the near term, demolishing almost half a million square of enclosed space seems pretty counter because purpose-built is cheaper than transformation seems incredibly short-sighted and off-point.
secondly, i am amazed that even if you wanted to ignore the sustainability issue, how can you make the blanket statement that it would be less expensive to purpose build than transform without stating what the purpose is? there were viable plans to repurpose the coliseum for everything from large convention spaces to hotels to senior's residences even if you want to project the silly "it can't be used for sporting even purposes" even if those purposes cannot be met in rogers place.
thirdly, there are examples all over the world of repurposed arenas including maple leaf gardens in toronto and stadiums like bush stadium in indianapolis.
lastly, if we don't have the imagination today or can't envision or support a second arena the way vancouver does with their old coliseum (of which by the way ours was a virtual copy), we're talking about spending more than $35 million to create a vacant piece of land as we don't already have enough vacant pieces of land in edmonton including vast amounts surrounding this building! we could mothball the coliseum and spend more than half a million a year in maintenance for 70 years figuring out what to do it still and be further ahead. the city of edmonton can't control it's spending - and this is maybe one example of why that is - and will have to borrow this money. half a million a year is less than 1.5% of $35 million while borrowing costs are likely to be 3 or 4 times that.
BrettB
Active Member
dunno
Active Member
What exactly was this deal?
IanO
Superstar
No competition clause, ie. mothball the Coliseum.
TAS
Senior Member
I sent an email to Tim Shipton of OEG about this more than a year ago when a city spokesperson and some members of the previous council said their hands were tied regarding repurposing the Coliseum for things like public recreation and amateur sport because of the no compete clause (and that was reported in the journal) Shipton said this:
"OEG is prepared to accommodate non-competitive operations in a repurposed Coliseum and is willing to work with the City to that end. We support amateur sport in many ways and are always open to helping bring new amenities and ideas to the city.
I’m not sure why the Journal chose to frame it that way, but we are not the barrier."
Gronk!
Senior Member
Here's an idea - have OEG pay for the cost of demolition! After all, wasn't it OEG who wanted the Coliseum mothballed in the first place?
Avenuer
Senior Member
I, too, am a fan of Elefante and the 'embodied carbon' argument is something that was obviously lacking in the City's new Carbon Budget - I agree that the cost of the carbon should be accounted for in City budgeting decisions, such as paying to demolish the Coliseum.pardon me if i disagree with ladouceur's conclusion here.
firstly, i'm in carl elefante's camp when he stated that "the most sustainable building is the one that is already built". in a city that is quite happily embarking on a climate initiatives that will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in the near term, demolishing almost half a million square of enclosed space seems pretty counter because purpose-built is cheaper than transformation seems incredibly short-sighted and off-point.
secondly, i am amazed that even if you wanted to ignore the sustainability issue, how can you make the blanket statement that it would be less expensive to purpose build than transform without stating what the purpose is? there were viable plans to repurpose the coliseum for everything from large convention spaces to hotels to senior's residences even if you want to project the silly "it can't be used for sporting even purposes" even if those purposes cannot be met in rogers place.
thirdly, there are examples all over the world of repurposed arenas including maple leaf gardens in toronto and stadiums like bush stadium in indianapolis.
lastly, if we don't have the imagination today or can't envision or support a second arena the way vancouver does with their old coliseum (of which by the way ours was a virtual copy), we're talking about spending more than $35 million to create a vacant piece of land as we don't already have enough vacant pieces of land in edmonton including vast amounts surrounding this building! we could mothball the coliseum and spend more than half a million a year in maintenance for 70 years figuring out what to do it still and be further ahead. the city of edmonton can't control it's spending - and this is maybe one example of why that is - and will have to borrow this money. half a million a year is less than 1.5% of $35 million while borrowing costs are likely to be 3 or 4 times that.
Were there any cost estimates shared for how much it would take to repurpose the building for other uses, such as the seniors' residences you mentioned? I would be interested to see what the numbers looked like.
kcantor
Senior Member
each of the teams would have done their own feasibility analysis architecturally, structurally, operationally, and financially and some of the teams were really strong. i had no access to any of the other teams financial analysis and they would have quite different based on the wide range of users being proposed.
the inclusion of the coliseum was interesting in that the city clearly didn’t want to pursue the possibility of anything outside of demolition.
the city also insisted upon acquiring ownership of any intellectual property within any submission (although graciously agreed to license it back when questioned - insert sarcasm emoticon here) which reduced our submission to a fraction of the material that was potentially available.
the quality and imagination behind some of the proposals was quite interesting, particularly given the kinds of restraints imposed on them.
i can imagine what might have been submitted if a stipend had been offered to qualified submissions, if submissions weren’t pre-disqualified, and if $20 million plus the building were given to the successful proponent. this is barely more than half of what the city is now going to spend anyway and would have recovered pretty quickly in property taxes noting that there is no return on money spent demolishing and the property taxes on vacant land owned by the city is nil.
the inclusion of the coliseum was interesting in that the city clearly didn’t want to pursue the possibility of anything outside of demolition.
the city also insisted upon acquiring ownership of any intellectual property within any submission (although graciously agreed to license it back when questioned - insert sarcasm emoticon here) which reduced our submission to a fraction of the material that was potentially available.
the quality and imagination behind some of the proposals was quite interesting, particularly given the kinds of restraints imposed on them.
i can imagine what might have been submitted if a stipend had been offered to qualified submissions, if submissions weren’t pre-disqualified, and if $20 million plus the building were given to the successful proponent. this is barely more than half of what the city is now going to spend anyway and would have recovered pretty quickly in property taxes noting that there is no return on money spent demolishing and the property taxes on vacant land owned by the city is nil.
David A
Senior Member
I'm not sure sure the city has the expertise to evaluate which of the numerous schemes if any is most viable.
If so many people have great money making ideas, why not sell the building off to the highest bidder and it will be up to them to make a go of it, without any further city support.
If they can't, then say in 3 or 5 years the property reverts back to the city.
IanO
Superstar
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Stevey_G
Active Member
I would’ve loved to goto that.