The Media on Urbanism
HOW THE MEDIA IS REPORTING ON issues of urbanism, and architecture:
"Exhibition Stadium was always an eyesore and, as Toronto's major sporting venue, a civic embarrassment. Waterfront vistas will be enhanced no end by the demolition, soon to begin, of the ugly old slum." Jim Proudfoot, Sports Columnist (Source:TorStar)
"Exhibition Stadium still has some friends left. While the waterfront facility has long been abandoned by sports teams and concert promoters, some city councillors don't want to spend $2.5 million to tear it down. "I'd rather take $2.5 million and put it into something more useful," said Councillor Judy Sgro (North York Humber). "It seems to me to be a tremendous waste of money." But Sgro's request to leave the structure standing was defeated in a 5-5 tie vote of city council's urban environment and development committee. Tie votes are considered defeated. However, another motion to demolish also lost on a tie, meaning it's up to council to decide when it meets July 29." Toronto Star July 14, 1998
"An ongoing embarrassment has been Exhibition Stadium, that Mistake by the Lake, former home to the Blue Jays, Argos and many a Grey Cup contest. Now that it has fallen into disuse, even the historical board did not designate this building a place worthy of a special place in our heritage. Yet some citizens want it preserved. This is the same stadium that's been called Excretion Stadium, Execution Stadium, Excruciation Stadium, Exasperation Stadium and other unflattering names. A quick death, followed by a proper burial of this derelict, is the appropriate action. Rayson James, Toronto Star, July 29, 1998.
"You had to be tough to feel confortable at Exhibition Stadium. It never let you forget where you lived and with whom. In its heyday, it was one of the city's great levellers, one that deserves better than to be levelled." Christopher Hume, Toronto Star, July 25, 1998
"Baseball is played in parks, not in stadiums...You built a ball-park that looks like a giant bidet. You build a ball-park that you cannot see the line drive off the bat. You cannot hear the crack of the ball. And people came there originally, but then they realised you can't see a ball game in The Big O". You put a ball-park down. You make it acoustically good. You put in good beer. Good peanuts. Good fans, and I guarantee they'll come back. Baseball is played in Parks, not in stadiums. You sacrifice Christians to the lions in stadiums." Bill Lee (former Expos pitcher) comments on Montreal's plans for a real ball-park. Heard on CBC, Metro Morning 98/10/01.
"He also quoted Joni Mitchell, about they've paved paradise and put up a parking lot, and many people here in Toronto are starting to echo the same arguments.Who wants to go watch baseball in an airport hangar? Which is what the SkyDome is." Bruce Dowbiggin (CBC Sports) reacting to Bill Lee's comments. 98/10/01
'Perhaps you're tempted to feel nostalgic. After all, that's the standard reaction whenever creaky edifices housing cherished memories are razed. In their heydays, these buildings (along with the soon-to-be-vacated-and-let's-face-it-eventually-demolished Maple Leaf Gardens) were the city's sports and entertainment cathedrals....But as sterile and frankly repulsive as the Skydome is, who woudn't prefer it to sitting outside in twenty centimetres of melting snow, observing a spectacle that will come to be known as the "Mud Bowl"...Unless you have a fondness for buttocks-numbing aluminum seats (Grandstand Stadium) or trough-style urinals (Varsity), its hard to shed a tear over the eminent destruction of these stadia. Grandstand Stadium had the worst baseball sight lines imaginable and was widely regarded as the coldest, ugliest sports facility on the planet. And the dilapidated Varsity Stadium has essentially stood empty for a couple of decades, save for the occasional Canadian soccer team humiliation or Varsity Blues football game played before a few hundred fans sitting on cracked, peeling bleachers. In an era when outdated sports facilities are closing on an almost daily basis, a cottage industry has sprung up among sportswriters keen on creating soft-focus elegies for lost athletic landmaks. Save your tears. These landmarks died a long time ago.' Greig Dymond, Toronto Life, December 1998.
Our Response to Mr. Dymond and Toronto Life Magazine!
Geez what a grouch! The Ice Queen Cometh. What is your problem Mr. Dymond? Did you eat arsenic for breakfast? The poison you spewed in your Grandstand/Varsity Stadiums Obit demonstrated one thing, that you are a man with a large agenda chip on your shoulder. What ever happened to enlightened journalism? In your discriminating view, history, memory, civilisation mean NOTHING! Money, vulgarity and the cult of the new mean everything! Truth, beauty, craftsmanship and the efforts and sensibility of an entire generation are reduced to an ignorant, pompous rant. The worst kind of empty boosterism. It is shameful that a magazine that is supposed to celebrate Toronto negates and diminishes its own city and its environment. Toronto Death, perhaps would be a better title for your magazine. By the media's silence, and when they do speak by their ignorance, the media has contributed to the destruction of this once urbane city.Your piece demonstrates once again that we will never be a "world class city" and that we are not the hip sophisticated urban creatures we think we are. Pathetic really! Urbanism, December, 1998.
"We have an obligation to the waterfront and to the taxpayer and to the rest of the grounds not to keep losers which will be losers forever." Joe Pantalone, Councilor and Chair of the C.N.E.. Board of Governors, Source: TorStar
RE: Nat Bailey Stadium, Vancouver..."there is the manicured, real-grass field, the immediacy of home plate and the evocative sounds-the crisp echo of the bat cracking the ball and the ball thuding into the catcher's mitt. There is the scenic view of Queen Elizabeth Park with its rolling, treed hills; the excitment of the dozens of families who spend summer evenings watching ball, the kids slurping their garish blue and red snow cones or munching hot dogs." Source: Macleans Aug 10, 1998
After the walls come down, Mr. Pantalone said, the site will be rehabilitated and used for parking..." Source: Globe and Mail July 31, 1998
URBANISM
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