City wrong to put Petes’ needs ahead of Lakers’
Paraphrasing Howard Hill, the character in Meredith Wilson’s hit musical, The Music Man, “Ya got trouble right here in Electric City.”
After eight city councillors and the mayor drank the Kool-Aid mixed up by city staff and voted to rip out the floor of the Memorial Centre next summer, they set up this town for a heap of trouble.
Dumping, at a minimum, $3.5 million into an obsolete arena to fix some very questionable problems with the floor has essentially guaranteed this city will not see a new entertainment centre for at least a decade or two.
As two councillors, Don Vassiliadis and Keith Riel, so astutely declared, we are again throwing good money after bad. They voted against the ripout.
By ignoring the second opinion that a fix was possible for a problem that is more conjecture than fact, those voting “yes” accepted city staff’s opinion that a ripout was the only solution, even with no clear evidence that a serious breakdown was imminent.
Common sense would have dictated that the fix be tried, because it is much cheaper and there was a very viable backup if the ice did fail. With a new facility somewhere in the future, this would have been the most sensible course of action.
Unfortunately, more than two years ago, when the Memorial Centre received an opinion that the floor needed to be checked before a monster truck show was booked, the complete ripout became the only option for city staff. They became so obsessed with this expensive alternative they completely ignored the many other solutions put forward.
Also, staff seemed unconcerned to the other costs of such a decision; the loss of an entire season of the city’s most successful and well-supported team, the Peterborough Lakers, the loss of a large number of jobs and the loss of rental revenue while the place is shut down for at least five months.
Early in this process the two main user groups, the Lakers and the Petes, seemed to be on the same page questioning the need for a complete ripout of the floor. But slowly city staff started to add other caveats to their fixation, driving a wedge between the two teams’ position.
The tone of Petes president Dave Pogue and Burton Lee, the team’s executive director of business operations, during presentations to council was both surprising and disconcerting to lacrosse supporters.
Pogue unequivocally stated only a complete ripout would satisfy the Petes. It does beg the question; if the Petes were to lose their season, would a fix with the backup plan be as emphatically rejected?
Mr. Lee then had the audacity to lecture the Lakers executive on how to market the lacrosse team during their lockout of the Centre. The hypocrisy of him telling the most successful lacrosse team in Canada, tops in attendance, advertising revenue and championships, how they might sell their team around the area was condescending, as one fan said.
Lacrosse supporters left council chambers last Monday wondering why only the Lakers must suffer to satisfy a situation that helps only the Petes. The Lakers would be quite happy to continue the status quo. The boards and floor are fine for their needs.
But next summer, city staff can leave their air-conditioned city hall offices, don their white hard hats and strut around the big hole in the middle of the Memorial Centre, telling anyone who listens that they created this. And Memorial Centre staff can now book in monster truck shows and anticipate the behemoths roaring around the new floor careening off the new OHL approved boards. Whereas the over 3,000 regular lacrosse fans may very well spend next summer lining up in the hot sun hoping to get tickets to watch the championship Lakers at the stifling, restricted-view, 700-seat Evinrude Centre.