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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)

My apologies, sixrings. I've confused you with another Olys booster with a similar nickname (fiverings?).

It doesn't change my argument that Toronto is already booming, but it most definitely kills the ironic twist I saw in your post. Sorry.
 
MisterF said:
Wait, what? Fortress had nothing to do with the Olympics! It's been around since the 70s if not earlier and closed around 2005. I've skied there, it was a back to basics place that was more of a local ski hill than a true resort. It's kind of out of the way too. Unfortunately it couldn't survive the competition from larger, more developed resorts like Sunshine, Nakiska, Lake Louise, etc. Incidentally, I've heard that they're having another go at it, fully opening again in a two years. Apparently it got some new infrastructure as part of the deal when they shot Inception there. Yet another reason to be a Chris Nolan fan!
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It had everything to do with the building of Nakiska. Before the Olys, Fortress was the local mountain for ski classes and intermediate skiers. (Do you remember the Woodward's ski school buses?). It never competed with LL. Nakiska took that biz directly from Fortress, as it's 20mins closer on the same road, with nicer base lodges.
 
Automation Gallery said:
Right-on, unlike the Rink Rat that lives in Riverdale and is all doom and gloom and anti-everything.
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It's almost the opposite, my friend. I'm extremely pro Waterfront Toronto's plans and therefore anti all the cockamamie schemes thrown up to derail them - be they ferris wheels, NFL, Olys, or casinos.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
It had everything to do with the building of Nakiska. Before the Olys, Fortress was the local mountain for ski classes and intermediate skiers. (Do you remember the Woodward's ski school buses?). It never competed with LL. Nakiska took that biz directly from Fortress, as it's 20mins closer on the same road, with nicer base lodges.
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Who's to say that Nakiska would never have been built without the Olympics? Fortress is a really small mountain for the Rockies - barely a third taller than Blue Mountain. Other mountains opening in the area isn't really surprising.

Fortress didn't close until 17 years or so after the Calgary Olympics so there's more to it than that. The whole industry has been consolidating into fewer, larger resorts with updated facilities. Plenty of ski resorts have shut down in the last couple decades. I can think of a handful in Ontario alone.
 
MisterF said:
Who's to say that Nakiska would never have been built without the Olympics? Fortress is a really small mountain for the Rockies - barely a third taller than Blue Mountain. Other mountains opening in the area isn't really surprising.

Fortress didn't close until 17 years or so after the Calgary Olympics so there's more to it than that. The whole industry has been consolidating into fewer, larger resorts with updated facilities. Plenty of ski resorts have shut down in the last couple decades. I can think of a handful in Ontario alone.
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I know this is OT, and I hate it when people do this, but you had to be living in Calgary in the '80s to understand the Nakiska dynamic. The provincial gov't wanted a win from the Olys and Kananaskis had just been declared a provincial park. Despite à much more suitable downhill in place at Louise, they built a completely new hill with an unsuitable for major competitions downhill course that has never been reused. Lougheed got his resort (the golf is fantastic) but it put a new hill funded by millions of government dollars, and therefore gorgeous, directly in competition with Fortress.

I have a soft spot for Fortress as that is where I learned to ski. But make no mistake, government funding of a rival was à major cause of its decline.

Finally, Blue is a 219m pimple. Fortress was a 700m ski hill. Anyone who skiied Canadian and compares Fortress to Blue is lying about skiiing Fortress. It ain't Whistler, Louise or even Tremblant, but it was à good hill.
 
Fortress was definitely not a 700 m resort, it had a vertical of 329 m. That number makes intuitive sense to me because top to bottom it "feels" similar to a lot of the medium sized resorts in Quebec, like Mont Blanc. I think the reason Wikipedia says Fortress is 700 m is because it's used for cat skiing now and they probably use the whole mountain. As I'm sure you're aware, there was a lot of mountain that wasn't accessible by the lifts or in bounds. If you wanted to get up there for some fresh powder you had to climb the old fashioned way.

Yes, it was a great place to ski. But like Blue Mountain it was a relative pimple compared to the other Rocky Mountain resorts.
 
Hank said:
More than Beijing? I find that hard to believe.
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The Chinese government hasn't released all the financial info, so no one really knows. Not that you can get reliable figures for any of the games, but the admitted London 2012 costs are WAY up there.
 
TOperson said:
So, you're OK with giving your money to the feds via income tax, sales tax, etc, then giving MORE of your money to the feds (and the other two levels of govt) via taxes, all to get a fraction of that money back in the form of infrastructure improvements ...
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I'm not sure I see the difference with the way things are now :rolleyes:

It's a false argument that by not investing in an Olympics those funds would come to Toronto instead. Transit? Infrastructure? How's it working for us so far???

People who oppose the Olympics strike me as 'penny-wise, pound-foolish' types... then again, how can you possibly appreciate a bigger picture if you're obssessing over details?
 
Tewder said:
I'm not sure I see the difference with the way things are now :rolleyes:

It's a false argument that by not investing in an Olympics those funds would come to Toronto instead. Transit? Infrastructure? How's it working for us so far???

People who oppose the Olympics strike me as 'penny-wise, pound-foolish' types... then again, how can you possibly appreciate a bigger picture if you're obssessing over details?
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Thats my point... Ppl who say we could get the money for transit far cheaper without the olympics fail to acknowledge that we have done very little with transit in the past and have got very few funds from the federal government especially. Maybe the olympics wont make my DRL dream come true. But its worth the risk for me.
 
Tewder said:
I'm not sure I see the difference with the way things are now :rolleyes:

It's a false argument that by not investing in an Olympics those funds would come to Toronto instead. Transit? Infrastructure? How's it working for us so far???

People who oppose the Olympics strike me as 'penny-wise, pound-foolish' types... then again, how can you possibly appreciate a bigger picture if you're obssessing over details?
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Hmm...well, we'll have to agree to disagree, because people who spend billions of dollars on a sporting event, notwithstanding the supposed ancillary benefits, strike me as just plain foolish.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Hmm...well, we'll have to agree to disagree, because people who spend billions of dollars on a sporting event, notwithstanding the supposed ancillary benefits, strike me as just plain foolish.
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Could I ask if there was a for sure NFL team being relocated here and someone like bell or rogers would pay for half the stadium would you be a little more open to an olympics? The Olympic stadium is a big cost of the event. Also did everyone whose against the olympic bid, protest the cost of the G20 security as well...
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Hmm...well, we'll have to agree to disagree, because people who spend billions of dollars on a sporting event, notwithstanding the supposed ancillary benefits, strike me as just plain foolish.
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... Riiiiight, and it'd be foolish to focus on such trivial ancillary benefits as transit, infrastructure, tourism, employment... ? I mean, it's just a sporting event after all.
 
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