InnisfilToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'COLUMN: Facing 'cold, harsh reality' of arena expansion,' published April 22.
What a waste of taxpayer money to expand the Sadlon Arena by 1,500 to 2,000 more seats. This will not get Barrie the Memorial Cup or any major sporting event.
We cannot possibly compete with the 10,000-seat arenas. This is about cash in the pocket of the Canadian Hockey League.
Can you imagine the costs of even the cheapest seats in order to generate the revenue required? Barrie does not have enough full-service hotels to accommodate the four teams that compete in the Memorial Cup tournament.
When the City of Barrie and the Massie family were looking at an arena to house the Colts, the CHL gave them the approximate capacity at that time that would enable Barrie to host the Memorial Cup.
You must also remember that the land was donated by Molson and when the arena was built there was, in fact, an environmentally protected area and a gully, which was a few years later filled in and became the parking lot closest to the north side of the arena.
The arena was squeezed between the gully and Mapleview (then Molson Park Drive). The parcel of land could only hold or support an arena of the size that was built.
The City of Barrie only had a population in 1995 of about 60,000. The size of the arena was also right for Barrie’s size.
Jim Holmes
Barrie