The Stadium that Emasculated a City

That Hamilton is getting pushed around by the federal and provincial governments over where to build its new football stadium is sadly an all-too-common story for Canadian cities.

The decision of where to build a new football stadium in Hamilton is the latest litmus test of the “cities agenda” in Canada. What began as a disagreement between a city and a football team has escalated into another intergovernmental turf war.

The stadium is initially for the 2015 Pan Am games, but its main tenant will be the CFL Tiger-Cats and their fans with the famous Oskee Wee Wee cheer.

The owner of the Tiger-Cats, Bob Young, wants it built in the East Mountain area on a greenfield site in a largely recent residential community on top of the Niagara Escarpment, near the Hamilton airport, which he believes will be more accessible to fans from Niagara region and the area west of Hamilton. He has suggested that if it is not built in East Mountain, the Tiger-Cats might be forced to relocate to another city.

Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger and city officials believe it should be built in West Harbour, on a brownfield site in the old harbour area downtown, where it could be a critical lever in the redevelopment of old industrial lands and the surrounding neighbourhoods. It could be connected to the city transit system, including a planned light-rail line. Some rejuvenation of the area has already begun with new parkland and other upgrades.

Essentially this is a normal debate between legitimate interests, with Young pursuing his commercial interests in making the Tiger-Cats successful on the field and sustainable at the bank, and the mayor pursuing his city building obligations. Everyone agrees that the current Ivor Wynne stadium is at the end of its useful life.

Hamilton is an important Canadian city with some remarkable assets. Its location at the west end of Lake Ontario is splendid, with the old industrial city built around its natural harbour, and a newer residential city up the hill created by the Niagara escarpment. The city boasts numerous waterfalls which form the centrepieces of its many parks and trails. Hamilton has McMaster University, which has prospered under the leadership of retiring president Peter George, and one of the finest community foundations in North America, built to prominence by former president Carolyn Milne and now led by former regional chair Terry Cooke. It has leading business people like Mark Chamberlain, who not only pursue commercial success but act as true community builders in fighting poverty and environmental decline. And it has the Tiger-Cats team, with its devoted fans.

Hamilton has a civic maturity which enables it to work out such differences of interest as presented by the stadium issue.

But seemingly out of the blue, two locally based members of the Ontario legislature, Sophia Aggelonitis and Ted McMeekin, offered the view that the province would pull its funding support if the stadium was built in the West Harbour area. Aggelonitis said she heard it from the premier’s office, and also that the federal government had chosen the East Mountain site. Each government has pledged about $30 million, and the city has pledged $60 million.

After that, all hell broke loose. The mayor and some councillors called the intrusion in city planning decision-making “preposterous” and “a slap in the face of democracy”.

Then the federal minister of state for sport Gary Lunn quickly issued a statement saying that the federal government would go along with whatever Hamilton city council decided.

What is clear from all the federal and provincial smoke in the air is that lobbying has found receptive ears on Parliament Hill and at Queen’s Park.

The essence of the cities agenda over the last couple of decades has been to recognize the growing importance and influence of cities by giving them the powers and resources to control their own destinies. This includes the ability to create a vision of their community, and then to plan and implement it. Mayor Eisenberger and city staff think that a stadium in the West Harbour is a part of that plan for Hamilton, and will seek council agreement.

If the provincial and federal governments want to interfere, it should be contingent on them tabling their plan for building the City of Hamilton. My guess is that they don’t have one. They don’t even have the bare bones of one.

They are just using the power of the purse, based on Canada’s taxation structure which sees 92 per cent of tax revenues going to the federal and provincial governments, to throw their weight around. Their pledged support for the Hamilton stadium represents a fraction of income and sales tax dollars raised from Hamiltonians, but they treat it like their own money to bestow as they wish, with little transparency or accountability of how the decisions get made.

This emasculation of city governments happens regularly across Canada, in mostly small and invisible ways. Thirty years ago in Vancouver, the British Columbia government decided that the Expo 86 site would be on the north shore of False Creek, rather than on the city’s preferred site, the south shore of Vancouver Harbour. The city wanted that site as a lever in the redevelopment of the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s enduring and intractable centre of poverty and the drug trade. Thirty years on, the Downtown Eastside remains as it was while the False Creek site has become condo heaven. Vancouver missed an important city building moment.

Unless the provincial and federal governments butt out, Hamilton may miss one too.