Bathing the White Elephant

I never had a problem with Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, denounced as "the Mistake by the Lake." My dad would take us to see the Blue Jays play ball and we always had a good time. But I was merely a pimply-faced teen in the eighties, so I had no reason or ability to halt the opening of the world's first retractable-roof stadium, the World! Class! City! SkyDome in June 1989.

What I remember most is the contest in which the public could submit names for the new stadium. It went on for months, with the various papers championing their favourites, until the powers-that-be decided on...SkyDome. I remember being astonished at how stupefyingly dull that name was. There were so many better entries -- SkyDome had to be the most boring name ever for a stadium.

I was wrong. Yesterday, Blue Jays head Paul Godfrey announced that "the Dour by the Tower" SkyDome, in honour of its chief sugar daddy, will be now known as the Rogers Centre. Waves of inspiration rippled through the hearts of Torontonians, long-time fans of the cable-TV monopolist conglomerate.

Godfrey also announced, "We will make other significant changes, so it's more baseball-friendly. We're in discussions with architects on how to soften the look of the building and reduce the concrete appearance of the exterior." One pictures a massive grey concrete slab draped in peach chiffon but, hell, they've got to do something -- an architechture website praised the SkyDome's once-cutting edge technology but, tellingly, made no mention of the building's look.

In an interview last October, original architect Rod Robbie acknowledged the building's flaws but insisted that the biggest problems are inside:

"There are a lot of cheap concessions," Robbie said. "The older the building gets, the worse the design of the concessions gets. That's one thing I would clean up. The junk that's in there is amazing. The lack of quality in design. The only thing that seems to matter is the low bidder. I should be able to walk around the concourse and see pictures of great players making great plays. Instead you're looking at a Lexus car or somebody's cheeseburger"...

More baseball memorabilia, more acknowledgement of Jays teams and accomplishments of the past would be good, he said. Robbie also talked about the original plans for items such as decorative floor finish, privately donated sculptures lining the top of the building, a high-grade decorated finish that would have clad the stadium, all stripped away to save money.

But the SkyDome had to look cheap, because its initial budget ("in the neighbourhood of $150 million," according to then-premier William Davis) had ballooned to nearly $600 million by the time it was done. While we taxpayers took most of the hit, the dome's owners still had to watch their pennies.

Even now, sportswriter Ian Harrison at MLB.com notes that "SkyDome was the only facility in the Major Leagues last season to use the old AstroTurf surface; even Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico switched to FieldTurf for visits by the Montreal Expos." Ouch!

And yet, with all that cost-cutting, a November 1998 Globe and Mail article rightly asked, "SkyDome: Why can't it turn a profit?":

Robert Baade, an economist at Chicago's Lake Forest College and a recognized authority on stadium financing, said the SkyDome is an example of the way the public was misled about the benefits of public sports facilities.

"It doesn't surprise me that bankruptcy is looming. Everybody kept saying these places would be moneymakers. The public was deceived. These places were built to provide for the owners and players, not the public."

And its the owners and players -- in hockey as in baseball -- who then go to war with one another over their booming spoils, leading to strikes that deprive the public of the sporting events we've paid for so very dearly.

There was a vague outcry in November, when Rogers purchased the nearly $600 million stadium from Sportsco for a mere $25 million. At the press conference, Godfrey said, "When I was chairman of Metropolitan Toronto some 20 years ago, in February of 1984, I know Metro Toronto put in the first $30 million and if someone had told me back then the price for the total building would be cheaper today than the price of the first down payment, one may have been a little amazed."

Oh me too, except that my "amazed" means "appalled" while Godfrey's "amazed" means "thrilled beyond belief." As President of the Toronto Sun from 1984-2000, he was the SkyDome's biggest booster so this must be like Christmas for him.

It is for Tony Viner, president and CEO of Rogers Media, who announced, "The Blue Jays will join Rogers Media, and the synergies are pretty obvious. Every time the Blue Jays trot out onto the field, we have three hours of extremely valuable, copyrightable programming."

Jays tickets at Rogers Centre will soon be available for $196 -- that's $50 for one ticket, $48 for the second as part of the Rogers 'Take a Friend' Savings Bundle, and the upfront payment of $98 for the next pair of tickets you'll want. The ticket counter will be open at some point between 4 pm and 9 pm.

Okay, Blue Jays, let's play ball!