I see no obvious concern about the sustainability, economic or urban planning outcomes of creating 2 competing, parking empire/entertainment/event districts, both fueled by large amounts of public subsidy 3kms apart in a city of under 2 million.
Sarcasm aside - it's always a good time for a reminder of the back-to-basics on what we are talking about here as I don't think anything has actually changed - we (the public) have always and continue to owe CSEC exactly zero.
We of course can choose to offer some subsidy in return for outcomes that are in the public's interest. I would argue that it's not in the public interest to give money at all - especially when the counterparty's position is closer to blackmail rather than arguing a co-benefit between private and public interests. But even if the amount of subsidy should be greater than zero and we can trust the party we are negotiating with, the public's bargaining position is still entirely one of strength - CSEC's job remains to prove to us what's in it for us.
The real issue here is how bad CSEC has been at this from the beginning - all their poor efforts have hardened the opposition to their project. Their approach is always a combo of lazily regurgitating every other North American arena deal promise from the playbook, combined with the usual vague threats to move the team and trying to leverage their sway with the municipal or provincial government. They don't care about West Village or Victoria Park, they only care about the subsidy they can extract - both in the upfront funding and the control of ongoing revenues. It's is all just another tired rehash designed to extract the maximum public subsidy possible.
If business was so bad here and so great somewhere else, they have had 3 municipal elections, an Olympic plebiscite, a few provincial ones that have told them their subsidy is very unpopular. Several oil booms and busts, all sorts of changes to the economy - surely these super smart billionaire group would have acted by now if business was better elsewhere? They won't because there is no where to go, or they would have done so already - the arena saga has been going on for 15 years now.
