Arenas Are Dead Most Of The Time: WHOPPER WATCH

“If we want to attract more people to downtown Ottawa, and, if we’re facing challenges because federal workers aren’t coming downtown as often and the federal government is disposing of some of its buildings downtown, is there an opportunity to put a new arena in downtown Ottawa that would attract people and become a new destination?”

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe

Ah, no.

Ever been to the Canadian Tire Centre in the afternoon, Your Worship? Or the morning? Or when the arena is dark in the evening?

There are seven or eight people there … sometimes. A few are picking up game-day tickets, a few took the wrong freeway off-ramp with designs to go to Kanata Centrum. A few are just plain lost and stop in looking for directions.

“Hey, this isn’t Tanger. You can only buy Sparty dolls.”

No Sutcliffe has this dead wrong. At last word, there were 365 days in a year. So that means 41 home Senators games plus a few exhibition tilts. Maybe even the first playoff confrontations after six years. Several concerts but there aren’t many touring acts today that can fill 20,000 seats. And Billy Graham is dead. Has been for some time.

City Penalty With ‘Voluntary Resignation’? THE VOTER

Want a second opinion? Just call your so-called partners at Lansdowne whose commercial clientele can’t draw flies except on the rare occasions when the RedBlacks play or when restaurateurs throw old meat in the dumpster. Those are the renters who haven’t left and don’t have a “for lease” sign on the window.

Now the rare downtown stade builds a little fun community around it such as near Fenway Park in Boston. But then the sanity of Red Sox fans has always been questioned given their losing ways. BoSox fans who drink together, cry together. Little Fenway town has all the joy of a wake post-game. Kind of like the disappointed who depart another loss of the DeadBlacks and trek across Bronson or to Bells Corners to find their car.

Now a casino might draw people 24 hours a day. They are the buildings that never sleep unlike the rest of the city. But then the owners of OLG surrendered the gambling franchise to your pocket phone. And then there’s marijuana. Only dopes give away the dope biz. Attention, Doug Ford. That said, a seedy little cannabis hole could set up shop in the street-level commercial of a new arena. Maybe a chocolate brownie shop could rent the place next door. And cookies, lots and lots of cookies. The market is there.

Or put the city morgue there. At least there’s people. Dead, but people nevertheless. You have to take what you can get around an arena in the daytime. And other people, live ones, won’t be around to disturb the dead.

Council Report Card: Well Below Average: BENN

So the point of this public-policy discussion is to convince Sutcliffe that a downtown arena doesn’t draw people almost all the time. Wonder if it worked?

Now tattoo parlours, dope shops, needle exchanges, bookies, pawn shops, chip trucks, payday-loan emporiums, bordellos, organized crime headquarters … they’re people magnets. No doubt the National Capital Commission has never considered these alternatives for LeBreton. Dinosaurs. But maybe Sutcliffe will acquiesce.

Go with the market, Your Worship. Go with the market.

Ken Gray

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