Quote:
Originally Posted by heep223
I've heard that number quoted, there hasn't been a formal study done though they are in the midst of extensive testing. Fair enough. However, here's an article quoting a city councilor saying that it's going to be significantly more than the hundreds of millions spent on the East Village site cleaning it up. I believe the general thought is that it's going to be double that so that's where the number comes from: article
Also note the article talking about how it sunk a massive amount of capital into the infrastructure in East Village, in order to attract billions of dollars of private investment:
Taxpayers will be putting hundreds of millions into West Village just like they did East, regardless of the arena or not.
Lastly note the concern that it's difficult to develop without an anchor tenant in West Village. This is from the CEO of the CMLC. Note that the Bow tower was the anchor tenant for East Village.
So the CEO of the CMLC is actually saying that without an anchor tenant in West Village, not only are we going to need taxpayer dollars at the city level to develop it, but provincial and/or federal taxpayer dollars would be needed as well.
This isn't a black and white issue, anyone treating it as such really is discrediting themselves. |
The Vast Majority of the $325 million is "infrastructure upgrades" not environmental cleanup.
The "infrastructure upgrades" portion includes funding a portion of the National Music Centre, a portion of the library, the St Patrick's island bridge, and rebuilding all of the roads, etc.
The environmental cleanup won't be easy or cheap, but it won't be anywhere remotely close to 500 million.