Let me get this straight, now you're worried about too much tourism in Toronto? First the games will hurt tourism and now they'll destroy the authenticity of our city through the shear magnitude of the tourist onslaught that will ensue? Wow, talk about covering your bases!
You're mistaking me for someone else. I don't think that the Games particularly help or hurt long-run tourism. They've helped Barcelona, I think. But they haven't really helped many other places. I just quoted an anti-Games and anti-tourist article. Really, I'm all about the cost and the silliness of building billion-dollar stadiums.
I don't want to kill your island buzz so let me save you the time and we can all just assume that you disagree with everything I've said.
I actually liked the article from U of T and it was nice to see the planner so jazzed about the way his plan came together. The West Donlands has been really done right and things did get accelerated to some extent by the Pan Ams. My biggest issue with the Village was that it was going to dump a ton of condos on the market, in a market that needs more inventory like it needs a hole in the head. But, from 5 years+ ago perspective, I also thought we were going to have a pretty major downturn in the Toronto housing market that would make those condos a real millstone around our necks, and Dundee Kilmer did a good job in not overbuilding. We'll see whether they get out of the project whole once they've developed the other (4? 5? 6?) buildings yet to be built, but it was a nice boost to them to get the government money to get them started.
The poppycock about Mattamy and UTSC is hilarious, though. There's a reason there's no velodromes in North America -- it's a hugely expensive niche sport North Americans don't play. They keep touting the, '2nd (or 3rd, depending on the source: there must be one in Mexico as well as LA) international-standards velodrome in North America'. THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT -- NOBODY WANTS THEM. They're big, bulky, and pretty much good for one thing: track cycling. The number of people that seem to be able to look at that picture of a cycling track and the stands around them and say, "Oh, look -- a multi-use badminton and volleyball court for the Milton community, with a nice Siberian fir and Nordic pine raised wall to keep the volleyballs from getting into the stands!" Oy.
And the picture of the pool is of... a climbing wall. Because we just built the most overbuilt new student pool in the history of university pools!
Luckily, we'll be able to use it for an Olympics... oh. No, we're going to waste more money on a new aquatics centre because Scarborough is 'too far' from the Portlands.
Thank you for paying for the renovation of my rugby pitch, though.