Quote:
Originally Posted by JHikka
The Halifax Examiner is probably bias one way or the other but it does shed some light on the ongoing meetings between Maritime Football Ltd. and Halifax City council, from last night
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This reporter tends to be really negative. Mostly I'd say he doesn't like private businesses, and tends to argue that nearly any public-private type venture in Nova Scotia is bound to waste tons of money and fail. He writes a lot (or used to write) for the local left-leaning alternative weekly and now I think this is his own site. Basically, I don't think it is possible at all for him to like a stadium proposal of any kind or to present just facts without editorializing, and his negative predictions don't mean much because he predicts that everything will fail or somehow turn out badly in the end. His stories do have useful factual nuggets in them sometimes though.
So far these details seem speculative but are consistent with what I was imagining.
I hope the city does push for a better location than a greenfield site on the urban fringe. That would be a big mistake. They also shouldn't expropriate a bunch of land downtown like in the 1960's but there is a happy medium.
I agree that the profits from mixed use stadium type developments tend to be exaggerated (mostly because the stuff that goes in the subsidized development, like condos or commercial buildings, might have been built anyway and paid full taxes without the subsidy) but then again I'm not against some public money going to a reasonable stadium (something around 25,000 seats without a lot of frills paid for by the public). There are probably not a lot of similar cities elsewhere in the developed world (approaching half a million people, and anchoring a region of about 2 million) that don't have a large stadium.