Tag: skydome

• Toronto should placemake a “sports alley”

  Being a sports fan is like having a bipolar disorder. The highs are high. And the lows are low. But right now — with the Toronto Raptors having clinched their first ever NBA Finals appearance — we are all on a high. Though the job is far from over, this city has waited 24 seasons for this moment. Turns out, all we were missing was one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

  https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1132668677600501760

  It’s pretty amazing to see how far we have come both as a franchise, and as a global city. When Scotiabank Arena was completed in 1999, it, and the surrounding area, looked like this. On Saturday night after the win, it looked like this, a veritable “sports alley.” I have long thought that Bremner Boulevard should be placemade into a sports alley connecting Scotiabank Arena (on the east) and the Rogers Centre (on the west).

  

  From now until this Thursday, all is right in the world. Enjoy it Toronto, and Canada. Masai Ujiri made a bet that I think most, if not all, of us would agree has paid off. Had it not, Raptors fans across the country would be criticizing him for trading away our franchise player. But that’s par for the course in this bipolar world of sports fandom.

  2019.05.26

• Photography heli tour

  Tonight I went a photography heli tour with @normandthegang. 

  I took almost 500 photos, including a bunch of aerials of our development sites. And we got lucky with a pretty spectacular pink sunset. 

  Here is a photo that I took of the CN Tower with my Fuji X Series (35mm prime lens):

  

  Lake Ontario actually looked like that. This is not post-production chicanery. Follow me on Instagram to see the rest of the photo series.

  Thanks again for the invite Norm. That was a lot of fun. 

  2018.06.20

• Global street artist paints 8-storey mural in midtown Toronto

  This morning

  (Friday, July 8th)

  at 11AM eastern time, the global street artist Phlegm will start work on a giant 8-storey mural at the corner of Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto. It’s going up on the west elevation of 1 St. Clair West.

  Here’s what it will look like when it’s complete:

  

  The piece is intended to be experienced at two different scales. From afar, you read it as a human figure embracing itself. (See it?) Once you get closer, you are then drawn into an intricate interpretation of the Toronto landscape – both built and natural.

  Embedded within are depictions of the Royal Ontario Museum (including Daniel Libeskind’s Crystal), the SkyDome (yes, the SkyDome), the St. Lawrence Market (my hood), the CN Tower (obligatory), as well as other landmarks in the city. It’s going to be awesome.

  The project is a STEPS Initiative and it is being supported by the City of Toronto, Slate Asset Management, CBRE, CIBC, and a few others. They have also setup a great website with a live webcam, so that you can follow along as the artist works.

  At the time of writing this post, nothing yet has happened. But by the time it reaches you (email subscribers) it should be well underway. The hashtag for all of this is #PHLEGMPAINTS. 

  Big things are starting to happen at Yonge + St. Clair.

  2016.07.08

• The economic benefits of a winning sports team

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  I was having round 1 of (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner with my father on Saturday night and we inevitably started talking about the Blue Jays.

  As I write this post, the Blue Jays are down 2-0 in the ALDS, but by the time you read this email in your inbox (assuming you subscribe), game 3 will have already happened. Either the Jays will be on their way to a great comeback or the season will be over. I am remaining fiercely optimistic.

  But in addition to the regular sports chatter, we also started talking about the possible economic benefits of the Blue Jays winning and being in the playoffs for the first time in decades. 

  We assumed that 50,000 people buying tickets, heading downtown, and spending money on food, alcohol, parking, transit, taxis, and hotels, would be a great benefit to the local economy. And immediately I thought to myself: this would make a great blog post.

  But it turns out that the local benefits of professional sports aren’t so clear cut.

  There’s been a lot of research on public funding for sports stadiums and a lot of the research suggests that it may not be in the best interest of taxpayers. A considerable amount of the spending does not get retained by the local economy and instead gets siphoned off to the respective league and to concentrated private interests.

  But Toronto already has the SkyDome, I mean, Rogers Centre. It’s a sunk cost. So looking forward, there must be some incremental benefits.

  Well, a recent article in the Chicago Tribune asked this same question in light of the Cubs heading to the playoffs. And it turns out that it’s also not so clear cut.

  Part of the problem is something called the “substitution effect.” When a sports team starts winning (and people jump on the bandwagon), money is simply redirected away from other forms of entertainment towards sports entertainment. In other words, instead of going to see a movie or going to the museum, people go to the game.

  In fact, a 2001 study by Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys called, “The Economic Consequences of Professional Sports Strikes and Lockouts”, found that during sports stoppages, 37 metro areas with professional sports franchises actually experienced no negative financial impact. And in many cases they performed better.

  Interesting.

  Having said all this, there’s a powerful sense of solidarity that takes over a city when everyone is rooting for the same team to win. And that’s hard to attach a value to.

  2015.10.11