Ottawa stadium proposal
This article in the Ottawa Citizen has plenty of details on a plan to spend $100 million or so in public money to renovate Ottawa’s empty and “dilapidated” Frank Clair Stadium. The developers promoting the investment are up front about the likelihood that the stadium will pay for itself — it won’t. So they propose that taxes and rents from a proposed retail district adjacent to the stadium be used to pay off the bonds and cover the stadium’s operating losses. It appears that the developers plan to sink their own money into the retail district.
It’s an interesting exercise to figure out what the motivation is for the development group. After all, why divert the revenue from a profitable investment (retail) into an unprofitable one?