If you’re living in Ottawa, unless you’ve managed to get yourself buried under a mountain of snow sometime in the last couple weeks, you’ll have heard about the redevelopment plans for LeBreton Flats that have been submitted recently. If you’re not from Ottawa, you’re excused. Also if you’re not from Ottawa, you’re excused from not knowing that LeBreton Flats is currently a barren wasteland and is essentially the last large piece of undeveloped land near the downtown core.
Why is this important to me, a hockey fan, you may find yourself thinking? Well, it should be important to you. Both of the proposals put forward for consideration to the National Capital Commission (NCC), the governing body who will ultimately decide what goes in to LeBreton Flats, have included an NHL-sized rink.
These are exciting times for Ottawa!
One of the plans being thrown into the ring is called illumiNATION LeBreton. This is being pitched by, among a couple other people, current Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk. Their group, Rendevous LeBreton, is using their proposed “Major Event Centre” as the anchor of their bid. This will be an NHL-sized arena that is capable of hosting NHL games, concerts, etc. This is an obvious upside to any hockey fan, which I’m assuming you are if you’re reading this. Melnyk can essentially pluck the Sens out of their current location at Canadian Tire Centre and plop them down at LeBreton as soon as the new arena is ready, since he will still own the team and will also own the new downtown arena.
On the flip side, the other group, DCDLS, is being run by a seperate group of billionaires, who also have deep ties to Ottawa. While their proposal also includes an arena/entertainment venue, it is not the focal point of their pitch, as they have instead chosen their anchors to be other aspects of the redevelopment proposal. What is interesting about this competing proposal is that their plan also includes an NHL-sized rink, but they do not have an NHL team to put in it.
One of the ideas floating around concerning this bid is that if the DCDLS group win their bid, they could allow Melnyk to own both the team and the arena, but not any other part of the LeBreton. Melnyk has flat-out told everyone who bothers to ask him that he would not consider selling the team.
In a business sense, this is a smart move on his part. If he even hints that he is interested in selling the team, the value of the team will go down and his ROI will be significantly lower. If he wants to maximize the profit of a sale, he should maintain the illusion that under no circumstances will he sell the Sens. This will ensure that any offers he still MAY receive would be for top dollar.
Other than the conundrum of team/arena ownership if the DCDLS bid is chosen, the main issue with the bid system is that the NCC could decide not to choose either proposal, and then we’d really be stuck back at square one (Kanata)
If you’re a hockey fan in Ottawa, you should just be hoping that the Sens get moved downtown. Their current location in Kanata, which is approximately a 25-minute drive from downtown (with no traffic), or an almost one-hour bus ride (if the weather is good) is simply too far into the suburbs to be accessible to the majority of people living in the Ottawa area. The new arena would be centrally located, and will be within walking distance of two LRT (Light Rail Transit) stops, Bayview & Pimisi Originally the LRT will only be running a few stops outside of downtown in either direction. But there are currently plans to extend the line further out to the surrounding suburbs.
Aside: Ottawa is currently in the midst of constructing a light rail transit system (a decade too late but that’s a story for another time). Both ownership groups have integrated the LRT into their proposed bids.
This will allow fans to have an NHL game (or concert or other major event) as just a part of their evening, and can still have the opportunity to go out downtown either before or afterwards without having to worry as much about travel time.
As it currently stands, the vast majority of people do not want to trek out to Kanata for a Sens game. No one wants to spend more than an hour sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 416 on the way to the game, and then spend another thirty minutes sitting in the parking lot at a standstill when they try to leave , before their hour-long drive home. It’s draining, and turns what in other cities is a two-and-a-half to three-hour night out into a five-hour ordeal. This is too tiresome for a fair amount of people, being especially true for midweek games.
Forty percent of games last season the Sens didn’t even sell 17,800 tickets, when they have the ability to sell 20,000 plus tickets (the highest attended game drew 20,511 fans to Canadian Tire Centre). On top of that, teams announce the number of tickets sold, not actual butts in the seats, so those figures could be even smaller. I can recall going to a midweek game a couple years ago, when the announced attendance was about 16,500, but there couldn’t have been more than 13,000 people there. The place looked empty.
A downtown and accessible arena would remedy this, and would serve as a viable activity for people during the week which would also ensure that the kids (and you) are in bed at an appropriate time rather than midnight when one might have to get up for school or work the next morning.
The addition of a downtown arena would certainly bolster outside tourism to the city, not to mention the added revenue for the new businesses that will be erected in LeBreton Flats alongside the arena, as well as the existing local businesses in the downtown core. Suddenly, Ottawa could become a more attractive tourist destination for NHL fans if people from outside the city would be able to stay in a hotel downtown, catch an NHL game, and explore the Byward Market and immediate surrounding area without having to rent a car to get to the suburbs.
Essentially, Ottawa needs this to happen, for the team, its fans, and for the city. The current location of the arena is acceptable, but why settle for acceptable when there is an option to upgrade? If the consumer has an issue with your product, and you are presented with an opportunity to remedy that issue, take that opportunity and run with it.
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