The big rink shrinks a bit
Our View
Editorial - Wednesday, December 20, 2006 Updated @ 10:51:34 PM
At an information session Monday to bring city councillors up to date on major
capital projects in Kingston, it apparently came as a surprise to some to find
out that the new downtown arena, once built, might not be big enough to host
some of the events for which it has been touted.
They shouldn’t have been caught off guard, not if they were paying attention to the facts during the original debate. Just in case, though, city commissioner Cynthia Beach made it clear that, with a seating capacity of 5,000, our new building would be adequate to host a national championship such as the Memorial Cup tournament, but only just.
Glen Laubenstein, the city’s chief administrative officer, relayed the opinion of Ontario Hockey League commissioner David Branch that while Kingston’s new rink would put the city in the running to host junior hockey’s showcase event, the league would prefer the tournament be played in a larger facility.
If this information worried anyone, it should have been a concern months ago, when the original task force recommendation — for a facility of between 6,000 and 6,500 seats — shrank after the proposed site changed from Anglin Bay to Place D’Armes. Suddenly, the planned seating capacity dropped by about 17 per cent, with few complaints.
Leonore Foster, the councillor who chaired the original task force, was more or less silent on the issue. Whatever was the basis for the originally planned number of seats – presumably some dialogue with entertainment promoters or national sports organizations – was suddenly ignored.
Now we hear directly that our new building will be too small to host, for instance, the national figure-skating championships, the very kind of event whose name proponents were fond of dropping at will. It’s curious that councillors were quite ready to compromise on the size of the place, but still spouted lofty expectations. No one, it seemed, was able – or willing – to connect the very obvious logistical dots.
The kind of comment made by councillor Steve Garrison Monday should have been explored more before the final vote to proceed. “I thought we were supposed to be playing in the big leagues,” Garrison said. For reasons not based in logic, some arena proponents were suggesting our new rink would attract events much like those that have come to the 9,000-seat John Labatt Centre in London.
Now we’re building a facility that can’t host certain uses. Who’s to blame? Opponents, perhaps, for being unable to to cut through the emotion of the moment – or unwilling to do the necessary homework – to focus the debate on facts. Or proponents, perhaps, some of whom wove every bit of criticism into a blanket accusation of being anti-progress, without considering whether there was validity to the critics’ point of view.
Or we could blame the staff, for not repeating the facts more often.
Or we could blame ourselves, for being so eager to have a new facility that we failed to see the difficulty in hosting a Memorial Cup-calibre event, unless London, Kitchener, Ottawa, Mississauga, Oshawa, even Sault Ste. Marie – places with buildings as nice as ours, only bigger – can’t take it. All other things being equal, the larger building is more likely to prevail in such sweepstakes.
Unless, of course, Kingston finds other, innovative ways to convince the league of our superiority and hockey spirit.
Maybe we can. Certainly we should try. At least everyone now has their eyes open to the main issues.