Louis Frapporti seems to be very articulate, passionate, pragmatic. I do not really understand his role as (volunteer?) advisor to HUPEG (or lead of The Hamilton Commons or whatever he is), but I think the city could use more people like him.
 
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A first glimpse at the inside of the downtown arena renos

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The seats are all out. The private boxes are gone. The stairs you'd use to exit from the concourse onto York Boulevard are no more. The scoreboard is wrapped in plastic. And finishings have been removed from every corner of the place.

Four months after renovations began at the building formerly known as FirstOntario Centre (we'll get to what that means in a second), the place looks like you've never seen it before.

"For people who see the outside facade and think nothing's happening," says Oak View Group vice-president of communications Teri Washington, "it is."

It is, indeed.

That's really the story here. After so many delays and a seeming lack of traction for so long, work is absolutely underway to renovate the downtown arena. And it's not just a paint job or some minor touch-ups.

Today, the inside is down to the bare bones. It's a hollowed-out, dusty homage to concrete painted in various shades of grey, all backed by a soundtrack of jackhammers. There are still some walls to come out and some other significant changes to be made but the work already done is significant.

While it takes some imagination to visualize what it'll eventually look like, a tour on Monday helped paint a bit of a picture.

We'll start where those York Boulevard stairs were. The main floor at that spot will become a restaurant that's open to the outside which will be available whether there's an event going on or not. The second floor (which had been a small venue called The Lounge) will be a much bigger, private members-only club with direct access to the bowl.

The entire main concourse - the one you're familiar with if you've ever gone to a game or show there and went looking for some food or washrooms - is being reworked to be more open and more modern.

But the big change is coming in the basement. The "dead concourse" as Oak View Group's senior vice-president of venue development Paul Young calls it.

Had you ever taken the escalator near the box office to the lower level, you'd be aware of the huge open space that typically was used for not very much. It's now going to be the main concession area for those in the lower bowl.

"This all used to be storage," Young says. "This will all be a new concourse."

There will be a number of clubs down there as well. Plus 10 unique private boxes running the length of the arena (this means the arena's unique retractable seats that allowed the floor to be expanded for certain events will be no more) to go along with 10 suites higher up on the old concourse that'll be on the other side.

The stage will remain at the east end where it's always been. But it'll now be cut into the stands which will set it back and allow for more seats during a concert. Roughly 15,000 for a typical show. During a sports event, those will be filled with new retractable seats that'll complete the bowl.

One other major change comes with the modernization of a 40-year-old arena that was built for life in the 1980s.

"One of the things we do now that, quite frankly, didn't even exist then was the technology infrastructure," Young says. "This building basically had none."

In order to have good WiFi, solid cell service, tap-and-go pay systems, modern HVAC and smoke systems, and other things, a ton of adjustments and additions are required.

Does all the endless concrete make that a challenge?

"It does," Young says. "Concrete and cell service doesn't go together."

That's still a ways off, though. The place currently couldn't look further from the finished product. That said, everyone involved says the project is still on time (for a completion late next year) and on budget (set at $280 million).

There are numerous pieces of heavy equipment throughout the building, debris is being cleaned up, concrete has been carved out of the basement floor to allow for plumbing and wiring to be run to the new concessions, and sparks are flying in the stands. Literally.

And there's dust. Lots and lots of dust.

What's most striking is how open the building feels with the suites around the concourse gone. There's so much more light inside as a result. We'll see if that remains once everything is done. But even beyond all the other stuff, it's made the Hamilton Arena feel so different.

Yes, the Hamilton Arena. Throughout the tour, those involved continually called it that. We've heard that name used here and there for a while now rather than the name we've known it as for a decade. It's on the construction helmets and the OVG website and other official items.

Is that significant?

"We are actively talking to several sponsors," says Oak View Group Canada president Tom Pistore, who says an announcement should be coming by March.

Does that mean the place will soon have a new name?

"Yes."

Just when you finally got used to calling it FirstOntario Centre instead of Copps ... ...
 
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I haven't stepped foot in the arena since the early 90s, so I rarely ever talked about the place since then - which meant that I never learned the new name over the last 10 years simply because I never had much opportunity to talk about it. It was always "Copps" in my mind.
 
Quite the internal transformation, looking forward to seeing it when it opens in 13 months! Will be curious if we begin to hear about whether the SallyAnn will relocate and we get some real action along York Blvd to feed off the reno. Also, anything happening in JS side (either within JS or linking into), or is Real Properties just sitting on it hands as usual.
 
Good stuff.

It sounds like they are keeping the old scoreboard. I assume this is because they are positioning it as concert-first.

And it is unclear from the article what will be on the ground level beyond the restaurant.
 
This is unrelated, but Sir John A Macdonald is prime land. Its been closed since 2019. I'm not sure exactly what the plan is for it, Ive heard community centre. One thing im sure we can all agree on, the existing building needs to go.
 
Good stuff.

It sounds like they are keeping the old scoreboard. I assume this is because they are positioning it as concert-first.

And it is unclear from the article what will be on the ground level beyond the restaurant.
Scoreboards are fortunately a relatively simple upgrade in the grand scheme of things. Since the renovations are concert-focused at the moment, Hamilton/OVG can worry about more sports-specific upgrades later once the teams come back.
 
Scoreboards are fortunately a relatively simple upgrade in the grand scheme of things. Since the renovations are concert-focused at the moment, Hamilton/OVG can worry about more sports-specific upgrades later once the teams come back.
Fair
 
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The room will be comfortable, but the view of the concert doesn't seem very good


We kind of knew this already - but it's still disappointing.
I find that the concert experience in a box isn't nearly as fun as when you are enjoying with the rest of the crowd. But hopefully the suites will be good.

As for the exterior of the arena, I am not sure what they could realistically do without pouring hundreds of millions more into it. The interior renos look very good save for the lack of a new video board. I will take it.
 
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I find that the concert experience in a box isn't nearly as fun as when you are enjoying with the rest of the crowd. But hopefully the suites will be good.

As for the exterior of the arena, I am not sure what they could realistically do without pouring hundreds of millions more into it. The interior renos look very good save for the lack of a new video board I will take it.
They have like a 30 year lease. If the venue does well, I can see a more substantial exterior renovation occurring within 10 years.
 
... the view of the concert doesn't seem very good.
The article says they're taking a “music-first approach", but the problem is that there's only a limited amount of things that can be done with an arena built for hockey and its seating configuration.
The first concert I went to at Maple Leaf Gardens as a kid was with tickets bought for us by a friend who had told us "I got great seats -- floors!"
But these were floors Row ZZ (or something like that), so we saw nothing except the backs of the people in front of us standing on their seats for the whole show.
 
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They have like a 30 year lease. If the venue does well, I can see a more substantial exterior renovation occurring within 10 years.
I think it's actually technically 49 years. I am not sure what the motivation would be for an exterior reno, even if this proves successful.
 

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