The following letter arrived on Canada Day. Fred Morris has been a longtime letter writer in my hometown of River City, Man., and while we’ve often disagreed, we’ve often agreed, as well. Fred tends to start intelligent debates exactly at about the time we need an intelligent debate.
To the Sun, the Free Press, Canstar and Scott Taylor:
As a proud Blue Bomber season ticket holder, it has been a difficult week.
The head coach needlessly conceded the winning points. Certain politicians conceded our chance for a new state of the art stadium.
After years of debate, we seemed to have chosen the Polo Park site. Every other serious proposal involved the use of vacant land. Suddenly, the complex Point Douglas proposal emerged.
Expropriations, bridge construction, and road relocations would delay this project for years. IS THERE A DESIRE TO USE THESE DELAYS TO KILL THE ENTIRE PROJECT?
The Federal Conservatives do not seem to understand that urban renewal consists of new construction and the preservation of functional existing buildings. It makes no sense to evict people from their homes to build a football stadium. It is no wonder that the Conservatives do so poorly in the inner city.
Winnipeg has a chance to build a modern stadium that will be the envy of the entire country. We should quickly proceed with the Polo Park proposal.
Fred Morris, Winnipeg
Fred’s beloved football team lost its season opener, not so much because Doug Berry conceded the eventual winning points, but because the offence couldn’t score in a women’s prison with a handful of pardons and if Berry and Co. don’t get that offence fixed this week, they’ll get blown out of Montreal on Friday night.
By the way, the Bombers haven’t scored 20 points in a game since they beat Montreal 24-22 in the Eastern semifinal. In the last three games that mattered — with almost the same lineup — they beat Toronto 19-9 in last year’s Eastern semi, lost 23-19 to Saskatchewan in the Grey Cup and lost 23-16 to Toronto in this year’s season opener. Throw in two 2008 pre-season games that they lost 12-10 and won 19-16 and they haven’t scored 20 points in five straight games.
As for the Point Douglas Stadium Project? Well, that’s a whole new pigskin right there.
For those from outside Manitoba, here’s the deal. David Asper, our resident billionaire, philanthropist, newspaper chairman, hail fellow well met and Bomber fan, brought an idea to the Bomber board in January of 2007, saying he would build a new stadium and take over ownership of the financially-troubled football club (and despite what some mainstream media outlets will try to tell you, it’s still financially troubled). He would build the new stadium on its current site at a commercial hub known as Polo Park.
Now since David delivered his original plan, back in January of 2007, it took him almost 18 months to convince a city of skeptics — and a city filled with people who don’t want Winnipeg to do anything at all to change or improve — that a stadium built on the same land where the current stadium now sits, was not only appropriate, but also a financially feasible thing to do. Even people who didn’t want a new stadium (even though the existing stadium is 54 years old and crumbling), seemed to agree that a stadium at Polo Park seemed reasonable and intelligent.
Now, I must admit, I talked with David more than 20 months ago and he very much wanted to take a shot at Point Douglas. There was a certain Pittsburgh/Baltimore riverfront-type renewal synergy there that didn’t exist at Polo Park, but David also knew that Polo Park was an easier sell.
So he sold it. If you go to blueandgold.ca, you’ll see that David has discussed, in one form or another, the Polo Park project with nearly 10,000 people. He sold the concept and most Manitobans had bought in.
But then, almost immediately after a meeting with Premier Gary Doer and Mayor Sam Katz (I say “almost immediately” because almost immediately after the meeting, someone — and it wasn’t likely Katz or Asper — had leaked the information to the Free Press), the Point Douglas concept was back in play. There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea, it’s just that it will take years to raise the money to pay for the land and buildings in the area, then more years to assemble the land and then even more years to convince the people who think Point Douglas is a crazy place to put a football stadium (and most people who have approached me about it think it’s crazy), to accept that it’s a good place to build a football stadium.
Frankly, I don’t care where it goes. There are good and bad points to both sites. I actually think it should be built in the Kenaston-Taylor-Sterling Lyon Parkway area so the rich folks in town won’t be far from their new stadium. My problem with all of it, however, is how suddenly political it has become.
Because the idea was leaked to the media, it instantly made it almost impossible to acquire the land. At least, at a price that’s reasonable. Suddenly, broken down old warehouses and one-time factories became extremely expensive and then the word, “expropriation,” was uttered.
Because it was leaked to the media — a potentially nasty group of people who are always looking for someone to blame if something they like fails — the success of the concept was almost instantly dropped in the lap of the mayor, a guy who thought it might be feasible, but knew he had to sell it to his councillors and the people of Point Douglas first. The media ran around calling it the mayor’s idea and the mayor HAD to do this and he HAD to do that, and suddenly it was his project, not David’s.
And then the media dumped all over anybody who didn’t like the idea, which quite frankly, is absolutely everyone who ever talked to me about it and that list is long considering I meet with Winnipeg Goldeyes patrons every night on the concourse at Canwest Park (it’s my National Post promotion) before almost every game. And don’t think for a second that Goldeyes fans aren’t Bomber fans. They are and they all have opinions.
This whole Point Douglas argument is a mess. If Mayor Katz makes it happen, he’ll be the greatest politician this province has seen since Duff Roblin. If he fails, well, so what? Nobody seems to want it there anyway.
The trouble is, if he fails (and here I am suggesting the failure or success of the project is up to Mayor Katz and that’s neither fair nor correct), the current stadium becomes the future stadium and that’s not good. We’ve already had a sink hole and a sewer break this year and at some point, the upper deck is going to fall on the lower deck. I don’t think I’d want to be mayor or premier when that happens.
