Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unknown Poster
Im not anti-Asper. I wonder where we would be had he not pushed so hard for the Stadium and chased his dream of owning the team.
But once it became clear he was unable to deliver and the government stepped in, why wasnt their a review of the design and details? Not that I trust the government, but this was a lot of money. If it was me, I'd have brought in an expert consultant to go through the details. It couldnt have taken that long to do.
And in the end, if they needed to bring on a sports facility design company to tweak it (or more), so be it. I think the media drove a lot of the issues but when the people giving facts were either lying or being extremely optimistic, thats what happens. Had the government stepped up and said "look, it's going to cost $60 million more and take 1.5 years longer but this is public money and the public deserves to have their investment properly vetted and a building that will be iconic for decades to come", would we have complained?
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Yeah, I think you nailed it. There is nothing to suggest that Asper did not approach this in good faith given his involvement over the years and his obvious longstanding passion for the Bombers.
But yes... the character of the project changed significantly when Asper basically stepped out and handed off the ball to Triple B which let's face it, is basically the Province with some bit contributions from the City. (The Bombers are supposed to pay it all back, but if something happens and it all falls apart, the Province is going to be on the hook.)
At that point it seemed like everyone involved put the pedal to the metal to keep the project going after a bit of a lull where it looked like things were in jeopardy. In hindsight, it might have made sense to rethink the project... although that said, knowing the way things are built around here, I wonder if we wouldn't have ended up with something resembling THF in Hamilton instead of the existing product. There has been a lot of stadium construction activity in the CFL over the last 5 years, so it's easy to lose sight of the fact that IGF would have been considered spectacularly audacious by CFL standards even a decade ago... hell, even now IGF is better than all the eastern division stadiums by an order of magnitude. I doubt government would have aimed as high as Asper did, so maybe it's just as well they kept his initial design concept.