The Senators Must Stay In Kanata: GRAY
The Ottawa Senators should not locate on LeBreton Flats.
Stay in Kanata … at least for the time being … maybe permanently. Locating on LeBreton Flats will cause untold problems for the Senators, maybe to the extent of the franchise leaving town.
The problems at LeBreton Flats are that serious. Don’t do it.
There are myriad reasons not to put an arena on the flats:
- The land is horribly polluted and while the City of Ottawa promises, under its brownfields program, to pay half the cost of remediation, the municipality is in horrible financial difficulty and cannot afford such a huge cost. The city’s clean-up portion alone would cost about a half-billion dollars.
- The city’s light-rail initiative is a failure. The Senators at LeBreton would rely on that system to bring fans to LeBreton but the LRT does not work and is unlikely to work well into the foreseeable future. It might not work at all. The very expert Transportation Safety Board was unable to find a reason or reasons why the train does not function well. It found many contributing factors but no smoking gun. If the TSB cannot find the problem or problems with the LRT (it finds the cause of plane crashes with the debris spread over kilometres), no one can.
- Light rail, even if working, cannot serve the needs of the city and the Senators. It does not have the capacity to handle 16,000 fans and, given past experience, will likely breakdown carrying that passenger load. The Senators do not want families stranded at frigid and windy LeBreton Flats in January. That would be a franchise killer.
- The National Capital Commission and its predecessors have been unable to redevelop LeBreton Flats in 60 years. Remember, 60 years. It shows the awe-inspiring level of incompetence at the NCC. The Senators do not want to do business with the NCC. With all the NCC’s wonky initiatives, the Senators could see its deal with the NCC change under its feet. The NCC does not want the massive parking lot the Senators would need at LeBreton and it would nibble away at it until the team loses that revenue. Count on it.
- The Senators own their Kanata land and building. It is paid for. The parking is stable. It is located beside the major freeway in the national capital region. The only reliable form of transportation in Ottawa is the car. Highway 417 might be crowded but fans can be confident they will get to the game … slowly but reliably. Ottawa’s light rail system serving LeBreton will breakdown … repeatedly … destroying people’s enjoyment of the game experience. It is a licence to destroy the franchise.
- The Toronto Blue Jays, weighing all the alternatives to their location (which is an outstanding spot), decided to renovate rather than spend billions of dollars on a completely new stadium. That renovation at $300 million and counting is much cheaper than the billions required to construct a new Rogers Centre. The renovation has been wildly successful. The Canadian Tire Centre is a serviceable sports venue which costs the owners next to nothing to operate. What is better? Spending billions of dollars on a location at LeBreton that will not work or continuing to operate in Kanata at the normal cost of building upkeep. Or renovate.
- The city is growing toward Kanata. The halfway point of Ottawa’s population was once Bank Street. Many years ago, a study showed that mid-point was Woodroffe Avenue. No doubt today, that point is even further west.
- Fans from Prince Albert, Sask. drive to Winnipeg to see the mediocre Jets. That is an 18-hour round trip. Put a winning team on the ice at the CTC and watch fans from Gatineau and beyond drive to pack the arena. The problem with the arena in Kanata is not location but the product on the ice. Build a new arena and fans will come for a couple of years to see the nice modern structure. But that novelty will wear off. Good team, fans. Bad team, no fans.
- The future of sports is not bums in seats but internet and television broadcasting rights. The only reliable way to draw viewers to television in the internet age is sports. Witness the Super Bowl. Witness Rogers buying Bell’s slice of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. It is the last refuge of television as the fireplace hearth. Broadcast rights are skyrocketing. They will go much higher. Some day, you could put an NHL team in Dawson City, Yukon and keep it operating on broadcast revenue alone. Rink location in 10 years will be academic. Rogers turned its Toronto stadium into a television studio with game presentation on-air second-to-none in Major League Baseball. The Jays are Canada’s team, not Toronto’s team. You see this by the huge number of Jays fans who drive many hours to places like Seattle or Minneapolis or Boston or a short hop to Detroit or Cleveland. Seattle games for the Jays are home games with Vancouver and Calgary residents making up much more than half the attendance at the annual series. How did this happen? Broadcasting. The Jays are a broadcasting franchise, not a baseball franchise. They are a product, not a team. The Senators need to raise their national following. They’ll never be Montreal or Toronto, but now they aren’t even a blip on the national hockey radar. Virtually unknown in the U.S., Americans must run to an atlas to find something called an Ottawa.
- The City of Ottawa does not have $350 million to donate to an arena. It is in a fiscal crisis. Any politician putting hundreds of millions of dollar into an NHL building will be pilloried. Look at the controversy (and failure) at Lansdowne.
- The city is a ‘partner’ in Lansdowne. It will be reminded of that if the Senators locate nearer to the Bank Street stadium. As the late Sens owner Eugene Melnyk discovered, if you are not part of the Ottawa old boy’s network, you’re in trouble.
This argument is counter-intuitive but true given your agent’s 26 years covering municipal affairs in Ottawa as a journalist, a person who covered for months the Rod Bryden financial crisis with the Senators and a long-time Senators fan. The hockey team can work (and does work) in Kanata. It’s cheap and its paid for.
The Ottawa Senators do not want to get mixed up in the twin government disasters that are the NCC and the City of Ottawa. They will be a constant source of trouble. They will hurt the viability of the team.
Furthermore, LeBreton is a big bill. Why spend money when you don’t need to? The LeBreton location is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. It could be such a problem that it will destroy the Senators. The Senators will continue to flourish in Kanata.
Make Kanata the best it can be, location aside. LeBreton will doom the team. Location in NHL hockey will become much less important over time. Broadcasting will be everything.
The Senators will make a location decision in the very near future. Stay in Kanata. It is best for the Ottawa Senators.
Bulldog editor Ken Gray has been a journalist at five major Canadian newspapers over a career that has spanned four decades.
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I agree with all the reasons to stay in Kanata, only I do have one thing. For many people it is extremely hard to go there. Many people do not have cars, some people cannot afford to take a taxi, or bus or Uber. I was wondering why this thought has not come across before. Why is there not some kind of shuttle service for fans who would love to go to an event and actually cannot get there.
Many cities in the USA do have shuttle services and it works. Like in Ottawa, there would have to be many shuttle buses (not OCTranspo) example from Orleans, Beacon Hill, Uplands, Carling Area, Westboro, etc.
I also know of people who would love to go to an event but are not able to get
there for what ever reason. The shuttle buses would be able to leave their cars
in shopping malls, and the police would not ticket the cars. On the way back from
an event the shuttle buses would be waiting for everyone to come out of the event and drive them back to where they were picked up.
Another good thing about shuttle buses is, if the shuttle buses are used by many people it would also make for less traffic on the Queensway or other main streets.
Also there is some places in the USA that there is no parking or too far away from a stadium that they need shuttle buses to transport people to the stadiums or areas.
By the way the shuttle bus service is free in most cities so I’ve heard..
Oh I guess this wouldn’t work here because this is Ottawa and it seems nothing ever works here. But this was my thought of allowing people to get to see something they may never get a chance to go to.
Getting to an arena at Lebreton by LRT won’t be a significant problem. The 15,000 to 18,000 fans will board the LRT at any number of stations over a relatively extended period of time. The problem will be at the end of the game. At that point those 15,000 to 18,000 fans will exit the arena over a relatively short span of time. They will over load the three (Pimisi, Bayview Confederation and Bayview Trillium) LRT stations.
Fans will soon figure out that they need to catch the west bound train at Pimisi, filling it to capacity before it arrives at the nearby Bayview Station. Eastbound passengers will use Bayview once they see the train is full as it pulls into Pimisi.
Three 600 passenger trains that must, for safety reasons not be any more frequent than 5 minutes apart cannot flush out the inflow of 15,000 to 18,000 fans in less than an hour. That is basic Grade 9 arithmetic.
As for the local bus service at the LRT station closest to your destination, good luck. Many of the last kilometre or five routes are either running at one hour intervals or will pick you up at 6:00 the next morning.
And that is why the Senators know they need 5,000 or more parking spaces within a kilometre walk from the arena.
Ron,
This is not a problem! We would need roughly 30 trains at LeBreton to take all the hockey fans or concert-goers away when the event is finished? With their traditional sound financial planning, I’m sure OC Transpo is on the case even as we speak and is ordering those extra 20 or so extra train sets so they can meet the need. Two separate orders, of course, because the same train doesn’t run on both lines.
We know they have nothing but the interests of their passengers at heart and would like nothing more than to be able to accommodate them at every turn. After all, with the huge surpluses they’ve been running of late and the superlative service they’ve been giving on all their routes, both bus and train, they are always looking for ways to give their customers more.
If it should happen that you get to the stop for the bus that would take you right to your door and the last bus has left, you need do nothing more than call OC Transpo and Mme Amilcar will come herself and drive you that last bit. All part of the service! On top of that, she will make a note of your bus route and, by noon tomorrow, it will be extended so you never have this difficulty again.
Cold (or hot or rainy or snowy) train platforms to wait on? Again, not a problem! You just need to take the climate controlled tunnels from the arena to the newly-enclosed stations to await your train in complete comfort. As part of the carrot to bring the Sens downtown, all of the bus company’s structures there have been renovated to provide year-round comfort with no expense spared.
Of course, to afford all of this, transit fares will have to be increased a bit along with the transit levy on your house. You don’t get such superlative service for nothing after all. For your $30 fare each way, you are guaranteed the best!
Ottawa’s population center is not where you say it is if you had factored in Gatineau. Put the arena on Lebreton and watch the number of attendees from Gatineau double or even triple. Add to that you ignore the thousands of tourists and visitors in the downtown area looking to do something at night. You also ignore them in your analysis. Finally, workers will be mandated downtown 4 days a week and this is also a source of attendees but yry you do not consider them. The Sens must move downtown to survive.
Mr. Katsaros:
As you can see from my post I don’t agree with you, but I do appreciate the feedback.
cheers
kgray