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  • By the banks of the Rideau


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    If you stand on the Bank Street bridge over the Rideau Canal in the south end of downtown Ottawa, you get a clear view onto the playing field at Frank Clair Stadium.

    To your right, the now-dilapidated and partially demolished south grandstand, with its dramatic poured-concrete angles and buttresses, looks every bit as tired and shabby as its reputation. Across the field, to the north, stands one of the strangest pieces of sporting architecture anywhere.

    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

    From the bridge, it’s a big old sloping grandstand, with section upon section of different-coloured seat blocks – not particularly inspiring, but it’s easy to imagine the whole place packed and pumping with the rhythms, emotions and agonies of a big game. Underneath, though, is a whole different world.

    Ottawa’s famous old hockey barn, the Civic Centre, takes a lot of getting used to. It’s big – but its entire south side has been mercilessly rammed into the tiny space left under the football stand. Huge diagonal support beams shoot clean through the building, pinching the seating area to just a tiny number of rows of near-claustrophobic confinement. It’s a great, loud barn when the CHL’s 67s are home, but a monumentally strange place to watch a hockey game.

    Why are we talking about this?

    Because yet another group of Ottawa businessmen want to take yet another run at bringing the Canadian Football League back to the lower Glebe. That means renovation – nay, redevelopment – of the entire site. And that will require huge amounts … of public money.

    Now, let’s get in the car, find that strange, pinched Glebe on-ramp to the 417, and rocket blandly into the far western suburbs of our nation’s capital. You see that huge rounded block of a building, standing all alone in the middle of still-nowhere-after-all-these-years? That there is the home of your NHL Ottawa Senators.

    The former Palladium (I try to avoid second- or third-generation corporate names) was all by itself when it opened in the mid-nineties. And even though Kanata (the regional municipal entity) is a growing, thriving techno-town, all the growth and the development is over the horizon, an exit or two further west, and closer to the widening semi-majesty of the Ottawa River.

    And it is here, of course, that Senators’ owner Eugene Melnyk wants to build a soccer-specific stadium, to host the MLS 2011 expansion franchise he hopes to be awarded pretty much any old day now. And though Melnyk sought to play it down at first, it is now clear this project will require huge amounts … of public money.

    This would have been a loser-leaves-town brawl for it all even before the global economy started impersonating the Senators’ initial season – or the CFL Renegades’ last.

    Certainly, soccer in this part of the world is a heavily suburban phenomenon. Kanata reflects that reality far better that the quaint, leafy setting of the Glebe. But Ottawa’s suburbs stretch for vast distances, and Kanata is way, way out on the western fringe.

    Standing on that bridge, taking in the entire historic Lansdowne Park stadium complex, I felt the same kind of link to sporting history and tradition I get from Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton, or Taylor Field in Regina. World-class? Heck, no! Fine place to watch a game? Certainly.

    The Palladium might as well be a Home Depot for all that it’s going to pull on your heartstrings.

    This is a very roundabout way of saying I deeply hope Melnyk’s odd, unexpected bid to bring MLS to Canada’s capital does not prove to be the death knell of Frank Clair Stadium. Let all the soccer suburbs converge in the middle of town, on the canal, in a rebuilt and lovely multi-use outdoor park.

    For the past 20 years, the continent-wide trend has been to build stadiums and arenas next to each other – as close to downtown as possible. I understand Melnyk would like to have all his eggs served by the same extensive sea of parking lots, but where’s the town? Where’s the atmosphere?

    The fans of Ottawa MSL FC are going to want pubs – lots of them. And while I’ve been told reliably that the watering holes of the Glebe haven’t been all that friendly to soccer support over the years, that’s still a ridiculously small sample, because there just haven’t been that many games. All the bars near Toronto’s BMO Field know the neighbourhood and clientele have changed. The good ones have adjusted.

    Asking Ottawa’s city council to fund another building in Kanata with the only money that will ever make a Frank Clair rebuild possible would, I think, be a mistake. Kanata is a convenient way for the money man to make money, but atmospherically it’s – a parking lot.

    If Eugene Melnyk wants soccer in Kanata, let him find a way to pay for it. But if Ottawa is going to pay to be part of MLS, let’s put the stadium right smack dab in the middle of everything – a lovely spot that needs a brand new lease on life.

    Onward!



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