Toronto's SkyDome: the world's greatest entertainment centre^†

Abstract

In the mid-1980s, the Ontario government partnered with some of the most powerful corporations in Ontario to build a stadium for Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Canadian Football League. I opposed the creation of the SkyDome (so named because of its retractable roof) on the grounds that corporate sport did not need public subsidy and that a publicly enabled showcase for men's-only sport would further the marginalization of women. Then in 1990, with a change in government, I was appointed to the stadium board with instructions to limit or end the public financial risk from the facility. ‘Sometimes poachers make the best gamekeepers’, said Ontario treasurer Floyd Laughren. During the next four years, working closely with labour leader Bob White and others, I helped sell off the stadium to the corporate interests that most benefited from it, while contributing to its management. It was a heady time: the negotiations for the sale were constantly in the media spotlight, and in 1992 and 1993, the stadium's principal tenant, the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club, won back-to-back MLB championships. I learned a lot that subsequently stood me in good stead when I became responsible for the management of the University of Toronto's athletic facilities. This article, written in 1994, places the development and sale of the SkyDome in the history of Toronto urban development and North American commercial sport and shares the thinking that led us to initiate and complete the sale. To the best of my knowledge, it constitutes the only time in North America when a money-losing, publicly subsidized facility has ever been sold to the corporations that use it.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Richard Peddie, David Garrick, James MacArthur and other members of the SkyDome staff for information, and to Phyllis Berck, Jon Caulfield, Tim Hutton, David Kidd, Jim Lemon, George Sage, David Whitson and the participants in the ‘The Stadium and the City’ conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, 15–17 November 1993, for many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Of course, the views expressed and any errors or omissions are my own. I should also acknowledge my debt to the friends who contributed in so many ways to my thinking on SkyDome.

Notes

^†Originally published in John Bale and Olof Moen, eds. The Stadium and the City. Keele: Keele University Press, 1995, 175–96.

^1.Careless, Toronto to 1918, and Lemon, Toronto Since 1918, provide comprehensive histories.

^2. Ioan Davies, in a Foucaultian echo, calls SkyDome the ‘entertainment arena as panopticon’, personal communication with author, February 2, 1993.

^3.Novak, Joy of Sports, 126. For a useful discussion of the development of enclosed stadiums, see Bale, ‘Spatial Development’. The provision of open space is not sufficient to facilitate undifferentiated mingling; for a comparison of the spatial basis for ‘festival’ at three Olympic Games, see MacAloon, ‘Festival, Ritual and Television’.

^4.Kidd, ‘Bruce Kidd Turns Thumbs Down’; ‘No to the Domed Stadium’; ‘Safeguarding the Public Interest’.

^5.Euchner, Playing the Field; Gruneau and Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada; Ingham, Howell, and Schilperoort, ‘Professional Sports and Community’; Sage, ‘Stealing Home’.

^6. Another significant form is tax subsidy, especially the owners' depreciation of players and businesses' deduction of tickets and boxes as expenses. In addition, state-supported schools, colleges, universities and national sports organizations train athletes for careers in the industry, while socializing non-athletes to become paying spectators. In the USA, the Supreme Court has exempted MLB's monopoly from anti-trust legislation, while Congress has sanctioned the National Football League's monopoly through the 1966 Football Merger Act.

^7.Lipsitz, ‘Sport Stadiums’.

^8.Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 171.

^9.Ingham, ‘From Public Issue to Personal Trouble’; Brodeur, ‘Employee Fitness’.

^10.Harvey, ‘Flexible Accumulation Through Urbanization’.

^11.Nelson, Perfect Machine; Hudson, ‘Satellite Communications in Canada’.

^12.Jhally, ‘Spectacle of Accumulation’.

^13.Best and Shortell, Brass Ring.

^14. In 1990, Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Eyton to the Federal Senate.

^15. The $C5 million gave them these rights for 10 years, but they also got the right to renew them in 1999 for $C100,000 for another 89 years.

^16.Macaulay, Bremner, and Schipper, Stadium Study Committee Report.

^17.Desfor, Goldrick, and Merrens, ‘Political Economy of the Water-Frontier’.

^18. They agreed in exchange for the right to transfer density from the stadium lands to its other holdings. The stadium and its grounds occupy 15 acres of the approximately 105 acres of CN lands slated for redevelopment. The plans for redevelopment have been the subject of perhaps the most protracted political battles in the city's recent history as CN sought to maximize the amount of commercial and institutional office space they could build, while a broad coalition of residents, labour and public interest groups wanted residential neighbourhoods. In 1986, CN won approval for a 5.1 million square feet of commercial and 5.1 million square feet of residential development. But the subsequent recession exposed millions of square feet of unrented office space, so the development has not begun. At the time of writing, CN is seeking an official plan amendment to permit 5.5 million square feet of residential, while scaling down the commercial to 4.4 million square feet.

^19.Filey, Like No Other in the World.

^20.Bess, City Baseball Magic, 1–48.

^21. To reduce frustrating queues, almost twice as many toilet facilities were installed for women as for men, a feature which has contributed to rising attendance by women. In 1993, females comprised 49% of the Jay's 4.1 million patrons.

^22. The DCI members were: Ainsworth Electric, BCE, Bitove, Canadian Airlines, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, CN, Coca-Cola, Cogan, Controlled Media, Crupi Group, Degasperis-Muzzo, Ford, Hiram Wælker, Imasco, Imperial Oil, McDonalds, Merrill Lynch, Nabisco, Nestle, Olympia and York, TSN, Blue Jays, Toronto Sun, Trilon, George Weston and Xerox. In addition, three breweries, Labatt, Molson and Carling-O'Keefe (subsequently acquired by Molson) each contributed $C5 million. The boxes cost from $C100,000 to $C250,000 per year, depending upon location, and the ‘club’ seats from $C2,000 to $C4,000, plus an annual subscription. Both were leased for 10 years.

^23. Robert Baade recounts that in 1990 he was flown into Toronto to advise SkyDome on how it could become profitable. ‘All you'll need is 450 paying dates a year’, he wryly noted.

^24. Prior to June 1993 for provincial taxes and February 1994 for federal taxes, the deductibility was 80%. That continues to be the rate for unincorporated businesses. The Ontario Fair Tax Commission, Fair Taxation, 239, recommends that entertainment deduction be abolished altogether. If implemented, this proposal would have a significant dampening effect upon commercial sports.

^25. The members are the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Coca-Cola, Controlled Media Corporation, Ford, TSN and the Toronto Sun from DCI, plus a group of private pension funds, Penfold Capital.

^26. The deal became an ‘annuity for lawyers’; the transaction costs for both parties came to more than $C11 million.

^27. M. Mittelstaedt, ‘Ontario Unloads Dome at a Loss’, The Globe and Mail, March 17, 1994.

^28.Schiller, Culture Inc.

^29. J. Christie, ‘Women's Place is in the Dome’, The Globe and Mail, November 1, 1990.

^30.Gerbner, ‘Dynamics of Cultural Resistance’, 44.

^31.Kidd, ‘Men's Cultural Centre’.

^32.Metropolitan Toronto Convention and Visitors' Association, Economic Impact Analysis. Of course, the different levels of government will continue to enjoy tax revenue from the privately owned SkyDome.

^33. Baade, ‘Stadiums, Professional Sports and City Economies’.

^34.Rosentraub, ‘Public Investment in Private Businesses’.

^35.Rosentraub and Swindell, ‘Fort Wayne, Indiana’.

^36. William Houston and David Shoalts, ‘Canadian Cities Play on Thin Ice’, The Globe and Mail, January 4–7, 1994.

^37. C. McInnes, ‘Big-League Basketball Coming to Toronto’, The Globe and Mail, February 11, 1994.

^38.Ingham, Howell, and Schilperoort, ‘Professional Sports and Community’, 437.

^39. Ibid, 461.

^40.Euchner, Playing the Field, 179–82.

^41. Cf. Gray, ‘Keeping the Home Team’; Ross, ‘Monopoly Sports Leagues’.

^42.Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 167–86.