Why Garber Why?

I don't get it either. I think he doesn't want anymore canadian teams

 

Call me an optimist, but I still hope that if the council votes for a SSS, we will get a franchise awarded for 2012, before there is an open competition. At that point we will have a bid with everything that MLS have said they wanted, and it will be time for Garber to stand by his words (almost inconceivable that Ottawa would not get a franchise if they had a stadium). If he doesn't, then I agree with everything you guys have been saying about him.

If Melnyk wins the stadium vote and Garber doesn't award a 2012 franchise immediately, I don't know how long council would wait before they reversed their decision and went with the CFL stadium. It may not be long enough for MLS to go through another full round of expansion. If not, I doubt there would be a future Ottawa bid (no Melnyk, no SSE and no SSS).

Hopefully a victory in council would award a stadium on the condition of landing an MLS franchise within the next 12 months minimum, which would at least give us one more shot.

 

realistically, 2011 was never an option because even if the stadium funding was approved today, there is no way they could get that complex ready for April 2011. Always was 2012 and if the city approves the stadium Garber will be making another announcement pretty quickly afterwards.

 

Wow. You guys still haven't learned how this works? Garber didn't even give Ottawa the courtesy of waiting for their stadium vote before awarding these two teams.

Ottawa's a lovely city. Aside from my personal feelings about whether it'd be a good MLS market, you don't deserve the shafting you're undergoing, and will continue to undergo for as long as Melnyk pursues a team that MLS will never give him.

Garber will tell you time and again that MLS wants to be there, that you're THIS close to having all the pieces in place, that you're well-positioned for the NEXT team - and continue handing out franchises everywhere else. Believe me - there's no happy ending here.

 

At least our pain will be over quickly one way or another. It will end either with:

1) a council vote for CFL next month, or
2) winning the stadium vote, but not being awarded a franchise for 2012, and council going back to CFL, or
3) having a franchise awarded for 2012.

I can't see any scenario that would have Ottawa as a viable candidate beyond 2012 because without a SSS in Kanata, Melnyk and the Senators team will be out of it, and good luck trying to convince MLS that they want to be in Ottawa without Melnyk's deep pockets, the sports know-how of SSE and playing in a CFL stadium.

 

You forgot some options;

4) City council decides not to fund a stadium
5) City council goes for MLS, we wait on MLS but no announcement, then City council for for CFL, but the CFL group has lost interest and moved on...
6) The city decides on the Bayview site, but neither MLS or CFL are interested

I won't hold my breath for 2012... Just watch how much St.Louis has gotten the shaft (again), at least now they have a partner to cry with (Ottawa).

And the St.Louis folks are right... MLS comes here, say the city is fantastic, say that IT IS going to happen, that all you need is a stadium. And they approve two franchises before city council votes on the stadium issue.

Long Live the CFL in Ottawa.

 

Lay off the Don or get a horse's head in your bed! He's doing a great job for the league. Even with your twisted logic you must realise that Ottawa can't be admitted before the stadium issue is finalised and St Louis has ownership problems. I expect them to be strong candidates for 2012 but you can't expect MLS to hold other franchises in abeyance whilst they sort things out. I hope you recover from your breakdown shortly!

 

Why don't you think ottawa could support a team.

 

Ottawa was not a realistic bid for 2011. Most Ottawa natives agree with this, so why continue to push a moot point?

It's as if you (and all these other people who say that Ottawa got screwed) have completely forgotten that MLS has expansion plans for 2012 and perhaps 2013, which is more realistic for Melnyk's plans. Whether you agree with added expansion or not is irrelevant; MLS plans to add 2 more teams before pulling the plug on expansion for a while, as has been stated. Garber has also said that the 2 remaining bids from this year's bid will be the front runners for 2012. That means Ottawa and St. Louis will be treated as the favorites by MLS whilst the other bids (including Montreal) play catch up.

For Ottawa, it all depends on the decision for the Kanata project. It can succeed or fail; no one really knows yet (although I'm hearing some forms of optimism from SSE...) Yet if it succeeds, I expect Ottawa in for 2012 along with St. Louis, who by then will probably have more of a backing by Anheuser-Busch (if the league asked them to, I'm sure they'd cooperate since they've supported MLS since day one...) My two cents...

 

Richard Starnes in today's Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Sports/believers+just/1412536/story.html

 

I think that's a fair summary of the situation. No-one can say that Ottawa got screwed at this point, because without any sort of stadium at present we could never have been awarded a franchise. And MLS waited until the latest possible date they had ever mentioned to make a decision.

So the focus, as noted in Melnyk's press release, needs to be on winning the vote next month. After that, 2012 here we come...

 

If I had a parakeet, I wouldn't even use that article to line the cage...

1) The ownership group needs $100,000 million? That's $100 billion! Melnyk is around $99 billion short. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined wouldn't even make the cut.

2) Ottawa is a strong soccer market? Since when? Based on the history of the National Capital Pioneers? The Ottawa Intrepid? The Ottawa Wizards?

3) If millionaires think it is worthwhile, what does that mean? Plenty of millionaires lost millions in AIG. They believed in that product too. If it such a sure thing, I expect Richard Starnes has given his life savings to Melnyk to invest in an Ottawa MLS franchise.

4) Hasn't soccer been the game of the future for most of the last 30 years? When will the future get here... 2100?

5) I haven't heard a single CFL fan say soccer is the sport of the future. I have heard them say soccer is boring. They say soccer sucks. They say $40 million for an MLS franchise is insane. They say soccer is ok, but only EPL and the World Cup. They admit soccer is the most popular sport everywhere on the planet but insist it never will be popular in North America. No football fan says soccer is the sport of the future.

Only soccer fans think soccer is the sport of the future.

I'd love to see professional soccer in Ottawa and Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Quebec City and Winnipeg. But I really can't see MLS expanding into cities with smaller than 2,000,000. USL is the best Canada (outside of Montreal) can hope for.

 

1) So the article had a typo - big deal.
2) Ottawa is a strong soccer market based on the number of players, the number of clubs etc. Ottawa South United alone have over 6,300 registered players.
3) Millionaires don't get to be millionaires by throwing their money away lightly. They research things, they get advice and then sometimes they make bad decisions. It doesn't make it a sure thing and nobody said it did.
4) 2012
5) Who cares what CFL fans think?

 

If you want a successful MLS franchise, you should, especially in a small market like Ottawa. You think an Ottawa soccer team is going to survive by ignoring the fans of other local teams, people with disposible cash with a history of ponying up to pay to attend live matches? Think again.

 

phreakydancin, it looks like we have a little Toon Army riot going on here. You are correct that Melnyk should worry quite a bit about the CFL fans in his potential market. No potential fan with cash to burn (if the world has those, anymore) should be left behind.

That said, the CFL group must do the same thing, if not more so, especially when the sport already has 2 strikes against it in Ottawa...

The more I read on this, the more I see Melnyk getting his wish over the Lansdowne proposal. From what I've read recently, Melnyk's plan involves more money, but uses less money from the city due to provincial and national funding. On the flip side (and I could be wrong about this) the Lansdowne renovation would be all on the city's tab and other nearby developments might hamper the improvements.

If I'm wrong on any of these, someone please let me know so I feel less and less like a Texan dumbass...

 

That's a pretty accurate summary and much more accurate than most of the opinions that are swirling around in Ottawa. The key assumption put forward by Lansdowne Live is that it is revenue neutral to the city, based on the fact that the city are currently paying around $4M per year to maintain the Lansdowne site, and Lansdowne Live suggests that the city take that $4M and use it to pay off a loan used to repair the stadium. They say that the costs will be the same over 30 years. Of course, that assumes that the only two options for Lansdowne are the LL proposal or to leave it vacant for the next 30 years, whereas in reality, if Lansdowne Live is not approved, the city will do something else with that site, and the $4M annual maintenance cost will stop.

 

So it seems that either way, the City of Ottawa is looking to save as much money as possible. I remember hearing about a third option where the city could decide to choose neither project, but that seems very unlikely considering that Ottawa sports fans need more than just the Sens and the city government should know that.

I'm still hoping Melnyk gets his wish, yet at the same time Kanata seems quite far from the city center. Don't worry, I know that downtown stadiums can't always happen and I don't advocate that nonsense. I just hope there's a plan for mass transit in that area if the stadium plan succeeds.

 

It is a real possibility that council may decide not to proceed with either proposal, but I haven’t heard that suggestion from any councilors. Obviously if council decide that neither proposal is a good deal for the city they could send them both back to the drawing board. I think most councilors agree with the need for an outdoor stadium.

I fully understand people who advocate a downtown stadium. I went down to Binghamton, NY at the weekend to watch the Senators AHL farm team and I stayed in a hotel a block away from the arena, which is also only a block or so away from bars and restaurants and the whole experience was excellent. However, Lansdowne is not even downtown. If we were talking about a stadium adjacent to the Byward Market or Elgin Street, and fans could get the train from wherever they lived in Ottawa, it would be a no-brainer. Of course, even then, you would need to find a deep-pocketed owner who wanted to put a team in that location, and you wouldn’t have space for the 5 or 6 community soccer fields that the Melnyk proposal includes.

 

Just on this note, the approved rapid transit plan has Bus Rapid Transit out to SBP, from what will be the Lincoln Fields train station.

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/beyond_2020/tmp/transit/pdf/150_alternative_4_en.pdf

As well, the Transportation Master Plan assumes growth to 2031 of 28% in Kanata, up to 140K people in "Urban Area West". They estimate that there will be 590K within the Greenbelt by 2031, at a much lower rate of growth.

 

Public transport close to where the soccer stadium in Kanata is planned to be is at laset as good as to Lansdowne Park. There are fast and very frequent buses on the Transitway that terminate a Terry Fox Station in Kanata which is about a 15 minute walk from the stadium location. There are local buses from Terry Fox Station, Kanata Town Centre and Baseline etc that go along Terry Fox Drive with a 5 minute walk to the stadium location. I'd expect additional buses would go directly to the stadium on game days as is done for hockey.

Plus there are thousands of existing parking spaces adjacent to the stadium site. Overall the Kanata location is wa better for tranport adn accessibility.

The City could decide to accept none, one or both proposals.

 

Another thing that Ottawa has going for it, the much touted "recession-proof" economy:

Not that 0.2% growth is anything to brag about really, but under the circumstances we're better off than most cities in North America.