Bogtrotter said:
I'm thinking with such a dramatic revamp your pretty much talking about tearing down and rebuilding a significant portion of the stadium, on top of reconfiguring seats and a new roof, then we're venturing into costs that are approaching a brand new stadium. In which case I'd rather they tear it down, Jays play at Tim Horton's field for a couple of seasons and start anew on the site with a modern design with sweeping views of the city :)
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The Renaissance Hotel is pretty self contained. It almost looks like it was added as an after thought. Demolishing it would open up the stadium to the city beyond. The upcoming towers clustering around along Peter from Front to King would be visible in the outfield as would Frank Gehry's Mirvish towers. Those sitting in the outfield seats would have a near unobstructed view of the CN Tower off to their left.

mwweAiC.jpg
 
TOareaFan said:
^any idea what it would cost to buy out the owners of the hotel prior to demolishing it?
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Hotel building cost and sold price:
The stadium would later become a thorn in the side of David Peterson's Ontario Liberal government for repeated cost overruns. After the Liberals were defeated by the NDP in the 1990 Ontario election, a review by the new Bob Rae government in October 1990 revealed that Stadco's debt meant that the Dome would have to be booked 600 days a year to turn a profit. The stadium income was only $17 million in its first year of operations, while debt service was $40 million. It was determined that the abrupt late inclusion by Stadco of a hotel and health club added an additional $112 million to the cost of the building.
...
In November 2004, Rogers Communications, parent company of the Blue Jays, acquired SkyDome, excluding the attached SkyDome hotel, which had been sold to Renaissance for a reported $31 million in 1999, from Sportsco for about $25 million – roughly 4% of the cost of construction
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Centre

MetroMan said:
The Renaissance Hotel is pretty self contained. It almost looks like it was added as an after thought. Demolishing it would open up the stadium to the city beyond. The upcoming towers clustering around along Peter from Front to King would be visible in the outfield as would Frank Gehry's Mirvish towers. Those sitting in the outfield seats would have a near unobstructed view of the CN Tower off to their left.
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It was sort of a late addon (see quote above). Now if I have to imagine, I'd build the deck, tear down the hotel and use the lower level of that space as a new "prime entrance" for the stadium (the upper level can still serve hotel purposes) - esp. if coordinated with the development of the RBC site to "open it up" along axis. The open space created by the deck can allow for a quid-pro-quo exchange of Bobbie Rosenfeld Park as a development site, which can be tied in with the lacklustre south facade of Rogers Centre and will also have an added bonus of reinforcing the street wall of Bremner along that stretch.

AoD
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
Maybe, maybe not - given the age of the facility.

AoD
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Hotels like most commercial real estate are sold based on the value of the future income stream...age has very limited impact on it.......if a hotel built in 1989 was too old to be worth much....the Royal York would have sold for closer to zero than it did for in 2014 ;)
 
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TOareaFan said:
Hotels like most commercial real estate are sold based on the value of the future income stream...age has very limited impact on it.......if a hotel built in 1989 was too old to be worth much....the Royal York would have sold for closer to zero than it did for in 2014 ;)
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That it maybe, but this isn't the greatest of sites, and renovation cost is going to eat into the value of the property.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
That it maybe, but this isn't the greatest of sites, and renovation cost is going to eat into the value of the property.

AoD
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Again....I think the renovation costs anticipated by the purchasers of the RY far exceed what anyone would budget at the R-RC.

Really the only way to value hotels is via the numbers (REVPAR in particular) which we don't have....but even a very low valuation of $100k per room (RY sold for ~$135k/room in 2014...and, generally, smaller hotels have higher values/room) would put the value of R-RC above the sale price in 1999.....sticking my thumb in the air I would bet this hotel sells (if it were for sale) at a number closer to $50MM than the $31MM in 1999.
 
Don't forget parts of the hotel make up the supporting wall at the back of the stadium which is also the deepest part of it the footing for it were actually drilled deeper into bedrock then the rest of the stadium because of the weight it has to maintain at that end. It's the only section that has to hold the whole weight of the roof at one time. When it's close the weight is spread out evenly across the building but when it's open 100% of it's weight is on the north end. Unless you want to have an insane amount of structural steel put in place to compensate for the lost concrete at that end just to give a view of noting in particular.
 
^All this is true, and it's clearly visible if one takes the GO Train/VIA to enter Union from the west end. It would require an insane amount of engineering and creativity to do any structural adjustments without disrupting critical rail service.
 
Rogers_Centre_open_and_closed.jpg

Notice the rails where the roof sections move

This is why the materials that make up the roof should be lighter in weight, so that the roof can open and close faster (as well as allowing it to be opened mid-game once per game).
 
Johnny Au said:
Rogers_Centre_open_and_closed.jpg

Notice the rails where the roof sections move

This is why the materials that make up the roof should be lighter in weight, so that the roof can open and close faster (as well as allowing it to be opened mid-game once per game).
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Yep. The view from the top shows that the hotel is disposable. The fastest way to reverse the bunker feel of the SkyDome would be to knock down one of its facades and make it wide open to the city. Removing the entire hotel facade and replacing it with low bleachers and a more ballpark-like scoreboard on stilts would do just that.

Rogers_Centre_open_and_closed.jpg
 
There's a lot of strange speculation and fantasy scenarios in this thread. Perhaps we should wait for actual information.
 
It's fun to dream and think big, though. No one's really come close to suggesting any of the more far-out fantasy plans are actually being seriously considered.

One note on the hotel: even though it looks somewhat superficially tacked onto the facade, it's in reality a lot "thicker" than it appears from those overhead shots -- there are dozens of rooms *in* in the stadium that actually have views of the field of play.
 
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