[Bonded]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I don't know, and neither do you. But unless money is suddenly infinite, we both know it's not nothing.

It's hundreds of millions of dollars from the city and the province. There is any number of similar-type projects that could have been completed with that money (again: stadium, concert hall, theatre, etc). They could've poured the whole pot into revitalizing that district without the arena. It could also have a down-the-line impact on our ability to fund things like healthcare, safety, transit, etc. without increasing taxes on individuals or businesses. Hell, they could've taken that money and used it on any of those things right now.

You like it. That's cool. But is it not fair to ask that it be justified in "the bigger picture" with actual facts instead of vague "good deal, just the reality of things, world's not fair, better this than blue rings, oh well!"?

Like, you have to understand that if the city has $500m to spend on this they could spend $500m on anything and they chose this, right? So there should be some sort of strong justification for why this and why not anything else they could have done, right?

I think a pretty glaring one is affordable housing. A 800 million dollar investment in that would be pretty interesting versus an arena spend. I suspect a lot of people would lose their minds though