The specs

• North-south orientation

• Permanent seating for 22,500 people (Ivor Wynne seats 30,000)

• Ability to expand to 40,000 for Grey Cup games

• 700 club seats

• 20 VIP suites

• 5.45-hectare footprint

• 180 parking spots

• Six elevators

• General admission seats are 21 inches wide; club seats are 22 inches and VIP seats are 24 inches wide - wider than industry standard

• Concession stands on all levels of the stadium

• Several hundred LED televisions to be installed in the concourses, washrooms and hospitality areas

• Meets requirements for FIFA soccer and CFL football

The next steps

• A site plan for the new stadium has yet to be filed with the city. That document will outline the exact specifications of the stadium and give the city a chance to review whether it meets its design guidelines.

• Ontario Sports Solutions, the firm in charge of building the new stadium, will take possession of the property on Dec. 1.

• The demolition and construction will begin immediately after the stadium is cleared.

• The estimated completion date is 2014, a year before the Pan Am Games.

• The Ticats have yet to announce where they will play during construction in 2013.

The Deal

• Consortium called Ontario Sports Solutions (comprising Bouygues Building Canada Inc., Kenaidan Contracting Ltd. and several other companies) won bid over two other prequalified competitors

• Deal also includes design and build of Town of Milton's velodrome and York University stadium

• Price and completion dates fixed and written into the contract

The community

• Stadium to host about 1,400 hours of community use per year, including soccer, football, concerts and community events

• Features public fitness and change rooms

• Designed to allow maximum sunlight on now-shadowed neighbouring streets

• Designed to minimize noise levels for neighbours

• Designed to meet barrier-free guidelines

The Money

• Overall cost is $145.7 million

• $119.1 to be spent on the stadium construction and design

• $26.6 million to be spent on "soft costs" such as project management, transaction fees and a contingency fund

• City contributing $54.3 million

• Province contributing $22.3 million

• Federal government paying the remaining $69.1 million

• Ticats to pay city $450,000 a year in rental costs

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New stadium has Ticats cheering

By Drew Edwards

Angelo Mosca has given it his blessing.

"When I first came here, I laughed at this stadium. I was used to playing in places that held 60,000 or 70,000 people, " said Mosca, who appears as Moses in a safety video played before every Ticat game. "I've been here as they renovated Ivor Wynne and it came to be a great place to play. But it's time for change."

Mosca, who played 13 of his 15 CFL seasons with the Ticats and retired as a Grey Cup champ in 1972, wasn't the only member of the Hamilton organization with a smile on his face on Friday. As a selection of city councillors and disgruntled citizens voiced their displeasure over various aspects of the new stadium, Ticat owner Bob Young and president Scott Mitchell were pleased not just by the new building but what it represented.

"I grew up cheering for the Ticats and the fact that they lurched from financial crisis to financial crisis was always something that I knew was going to impact them on the field, " said Young, who bought the team out of bankruptcy in 2004. "Getting into a new stadium is a huge step forward in terms of the

financial stability of the team."

Fans will likely be happy with the new design as well - especially considering that it will replace an existing stadium that opened in 1928. Among the details:

a capacity of over 24,000 with the ability to expand to accommodate up to 40,000 for events such as the Grey Cup.

improved seating and leg room as well as improved sight lines: the stands in the new stadium will have a much steeper pitch than the existing Ivor Wynne.

high definition video board - expected to be 20 per cent larger - a second, smaller video board and hundreds of monitors placed throughout the building.

the stadium rotated 90 degrees to cut down on the prevailing winds blowing across the field.

Ben Weinstein is an architect with Cannon Design and is the leader of the team that designed the stadium. He made several trips to the existing Ivor Wynne and said that retaining some of the old barn's feel was paramount.

"This stadium is truly unique and it has a closely knit feel - people are always connected to the game, " Weinstein said. "We wanted to make sure that what makes this venue special remains."

The new stadium will be big enough to accommodate a CFL championship game and league commissioner Mark Cohon said the league's Board of Governors is expecting to get a bid from the club and the city.

"The CFL has made it clear that we want to bring the Grey Cup back to Hamilton, " Cohon said.

There will be some changes that may not go over as well with Ticat Nation, however. Because the facility must meet the standards for international soccer, the stands will begin 11 metres from the sidelines instead of the current seven.

The name will also change, says Mitchell.

"I think there will be a significant component to the stadium that will honour the Ivor Wynne name but clearly there will be a new name for the facility, " he said.

After a bitter battle with city council over the stadium's location, Mitchell said he was eager to move forward on the project.

"It's great to see the genius of the design and the result of the process that turned out exactly the way it was supposed to, " Mitchell said. "It's been a long road to get here but it's a great day today."

With a stadium deal secure and the design phase complete, Young said the final piece of the Ticats' economic future lies with the league's next television deal, which is up for renewal after next season. He is, as always, optimistic about the team's future.

"You know the old expression ‘the light at the end of the tunnel' and you always fear it's the onrushing train?" Young said. "It's not the onrushing train."

Mosca, a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, who now makes appearances as an ambassador for the club, said there's one more detail that needs to be addressed. "It going to be a beautiful stadium, " Mosca said. "We just need a decent team to put in it."

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It'll always be about football

By Steve Milton

It was only a bunch of drawings and some enthusiastic speeches but suddenly, and for the first time, everything feels so real.

After months, years actually, of bitterness, underwhelming compromise and absurd speculation, we know how the steel and stone will be arranged to create the Ticats' new home. And make no mistake about it: while Friday's unveiling of the plans for Civic Stadium 2.0 revolved mostly around soccer and the 2015 Pan Am Games, for the vast majority of people in this city, it'll always be about football.

Until the doors open - and maybe not even until the Ticats begin winning with regularity there - there will be as much criticism about the new stadium as there will be praise. This is the City of Chronic Complaint and the ugly history of debate which led to the idea of Ivor Wynne Stadium rising like a phoenix from its own ashes has left a bitter public residue about the entire process.

Still, something major in this city is moving ahead with a real plan and real money. And that doesn't happen that often around here. So Friday was a big, and good, day for a city that sees far too few of them.

We've said before that the classic Hamilton gridlock which resulted in a compromise - which was no one's first, nor maybe even second, choice - may turn into what construction types call "a happy accident." If the new stadium lasts as long as the old, elite sport will have been played in the same spot in this city for a century and a half. Disregard Fenway and then tell us of another place in North America where that is likely to happen.

That, folks, is tradition and, as CFL commissioner Mark Cohon says, there is nowhere near enough retained tradition in this country - especially with regard to our public buildings. History shouldn't just be read about, it should also be seen and lived.

And what a brush we had with a gaffe of historic proportions. Like the new stadium, hate it, or reserve judgment, but if the stakeholders had bickered their way out of the provincial and federal money that made a new stadium possible, Hamilton would never, ever, have lived it down. Especially behind closed political doors where cash for other projects is doled out.

"It was as close to the brink of never happening as it could be to be salvaged, " Ticat president Scott Mitchell says. "The reality of the discussion of woulda, coulda, shoulda does not exist. This was the only solution."

Whether that solution resonates with the present and future football crowd is impossible to accurately predict from a mere design, impressive as it is, because Civic/Ivor Wynne was never remotely about the architecture. It was about the people and intimacy. It was our unofficial public square.

And since the new stadium has roughly 80 per cent of the seating of the old one, spread over about twice the square footage, and the stands farther from the field than before, it's natural to question whether there can possibly be as much intimacy with that much room to roam.

There are potential answers to that - again, only provable once the stadium is open and operating - including the fact that it's a smaller stadium than could have been built with the same money.

The "C" factor - how far you can see over the people in front of you - is much higher for most seats than in the current stadium, so the sight lines will be better. The greater distance from sideline to stands will be somewhat mollified by a ring of seats at field level, similar to the current limited premium on-field seating. If the Ticats take care of all the other details, like they will with that one, intimacy shouldn't be a problem. But will it be as classically intimate? No. Will that matter eventually? All we can say is, we'll see.

In some cases, like the vast entryway plaza off Cannon Street, the larger space will paradoxically promote closeness. That plaza is slightly higher than the field and will afford an immediate, stimulating view of players preparing for the game as fans enter the stadium. The edge of the plaza is only nine feet from the back of the end zone.

"I think it will be the "that's where I'm going to watch it" part of the stadium, " says Ben Weinstein, the architect who'll steer the project through the next 20 months.

"You'll get that leap into the fans after a touchdown."

Weinstein says the design team rejected having the second tier of stands overhanging the lower level because such stadiums tend to have an "imposing feel in the neighbourhood. When a stadium has an open feel, it integrates better."

That's encouraging to hear because compatibility with its urban surroundings has been a critical ingredient of that parcel of land since it was The Fields at Scott Farm.

Mitchell says retaining much of the existing ambience was a goal from the start of the design project.

"I think that's exactly what we've done, " he said Friday. "By going to a smaller stadium that is more intimate, it's all about the fan experience ..."

"Competing with the technology that's out there right now - people staying home and watching it on TV - that's what it's about."

Ivor Wynne, despite its terrific scoreboard, does not remotely compete with that technology, so its successor will unavoidably have a much different feel to it.

It's now up to the Ticats, and only the Ticats, to make sure that "different" means "better."

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Students from the Prince of Wales school show their enthusiasm at Ivor Wynne Friday afternoon during the unveiling of plans for a new stadium. Cathie Coward, The Hamilton Spectator

Plans met with excitement, disappointment

By Emma Reilly

The long-awaited release of the design of Hamilton's new Pan Am stadium Friday was marked with mixed feelings.

While the Ticats, Pan Am Games officials, and representatives from the provincial and federal governments heralded the reveal as a banner day for sports in Hamilton, councillors - and many of the community members they represent - were left cold. There was a sense of resignation and frustration around the council table Friday as officials from Infrastructure Ontario presented some - but not all - of the details of the new stadium.

And while the official ceremony at Ivor Wynne highlighted the stadium's bright future, there was a sense of regret from some community members and councillors about the tangled debate that led up to Friday's announcement.

As expected, the stadium, which is being reoriented north-south, will meet all requirements for both FIFA soccer and CFL football games. It will have 22,500 seats (compared to Ivor Wynne's 30,000) and 180 parking spots (compared to the 400 available at the Cannon Street stadium).

Friday began with a Pan Am subcommittee meeting at City Hall, when Infrastructure Ontario officials presented an overview of the design to councillors. While councillors said they were pleased to have a new stadium, as Lloyd Ferguson put it, there were "dark clouds" over the process.

Several councillors asked pointed questions at the meeting about why the construction agency wouldn't reveal any details to council before the official 2 p.m. unveiling at Ivor Wynne.

Councillor Brad Clark said he plans to ask the province's ombudsman and privacy commissioner to investigate Infrastructure Ontario's insistence on keeping all the details of the bidding process a secret.

Ferguson pointed out that the new stadium has only a fraction of the parking spots that were potentially available at any other proposed location. The Tiger-Cats offered to pay for upwards of 6,000 parking spots at their one-time favoured site, the east Mountain. But in a report from 2010, city staff said there were 4,615 parking spots at the west harbour - 600 near the stadium, an additional 1,500 on nearby city-owned property, and 2,515 spots within 700 metres.

The lone council voice who defended the process was Mayor Bob Bratina, who participated in the 2 p.m. announcement along with MP Bal Gosal, minister of state (sport), MPP Charles Sousa, minister responsible for the Pan Am Games, and TO2015 CEO Ian Troop.

Bratina said it was "special, significant and positive news" and "council and the public were well-represented by our staff."

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Who said what

"For me, it's all about what's in front of us. I think we have tremendous challenges as a community to take advantage of this opportunity, so my mind is focused on what lies ahead and how Hamilton takes advantage of this."

- TO2015 CEO Ian Troop

"Hamilton has a highly skilled and highly unionized workforce. They've got a schedule to meet here. They can't meet it with unskilled labour."

- John McKendrick, Infrastructure Ontario

"The location wasn't the first choice of anyone - everyone had their favourite location - but this is brilliant. The French have a great expression: ‘Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.' Only this is very good."

- Ticats owner Bob Young

"When they designed the stadium, they incorporated the ability to host a Grey Cup. It will be big enough."

- CFL commissioner Mark Cohon

"I think city council did a great job. They've got a responsibility to the taxpayers in this city to make sure the money is being spent responsibly."

- Ticats president Scott Mitchell

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City councillor Lloyd Ferguson.

New stadium opens old wounds for city councillor

By Andrew Dreschel

Scant hours before plans for the new stadium at Ivor Wynne were unveiled, Councillor Lloyd Ferguson used three words to explain why it isn't being built on Hamilton's waterfront.

Scott Mitchell's ego.

Ferguson says the Tiger-Cats president's stubborn refusal to back down from his opposition to the west harbour ultimately cost the city the better location.

"Ego got in the way of making the right decision, " Ferguson said. "This one guy killed this thing."

"One guy who isn't even going to be with the Tiger-Cats when this thing opens."

The hard-nosed Mitchell recently announced he'll probably be out of football and more involved in owner Bob Young's other businesses when the new stadium opens in 2014.

After Friday's unveiling ceremonies at Ivor Wynne, Mitchell chuckled when asked for a response to Ferguson's comments.

"I'm not here or anybody is here to talk about west harbour, " he said. "There is a hundred different things that went into the siting a stadium and the fact of the matter is this is the only financially feasible location."

"It's a great day to move forward and we couldn't be more excited about it."

But Ferguson argues that Ivor Wynne clearly was not the only financially viable location given that construction costs are now pegged at $119.1 million instead of the $145 million originally budgeted.

The retired general manager of Dufferin Construction scoffs at the notion "soft costs" will gobble up the remaining $25 million.

He argues the new bottom line makes a mockery of Mitchell's claim that there would have been a huge funding gap for building in the west harbour.

Like other councillors, Ferguson is deeply conflicted over the stadium process and burdened with the sense of a missed community-building opportunity.

That conflict struck a sour note throughout Friday's presentation at City Hall and the following on-field ceremonies at Ivor Wynne.

Interestingly enough, neither Mitchell nor Young spoke publicly at the event. The Pan Am organizers obviously wanted to focus on the 2015 games, not the lingering controversies connected with the club's unbending "hell no, we won't go" treatment of the west harbour.

Ferguson is convinced those same organizers gave the Ticats the trump card to dictate where the city-owned stadium would go when they said there would be no money without a legacy tenant.

But that's just one more thing sticking in Ferguson's craw.

The co-chair of the city's Pan Am subcommittee is frustrated that Ivor Wynne doesn't meet any of the Ticats original conditions for a new stadium. They said it had to have plenty of parking and easy highway access in order to transform the money-losing team into a regional attraction.

The club used those arguments against the waterfront, but in fact, says Ferguson, the west harbour hit those markers far more than Ivor Wynne ever will.

Ferguson believes things went off track because once Mitchell drew a line in the sand, he simply couldn't bring himself to back down.

"And what a stupid reason."

Ferguson also blames Young for too often deferring the issue to Mitchell instead of actively engaging in the discussion.

He says he found the same thing this summer during his last ditch attempt to get Young to reconsider west harbour.

Finally, Ferguson is also deeply frustrated that he voted for Ivor Wynne in the first place.

He says he only backed rebuilding the Balsam Avenue facility because Infrastructure Ontario told council there wasn't enough money to build a new stadium.

His thinking changed when city staff informed him the provincial development agency suddenly discovered there was enough on the table to build a stadium from the ground up, after all.

"We were misled, quite frankly."

Strong words on a subject that will continue to elicit strong feelings even after opening day.