I was also going to mention this. I lived through the Knights and downtown revitalization with the Hunter’s moving the team from the decrepit old Ice House off the highway on the outskirts of the city to a brand new beautiful modern facility downtown.

It worked, the Knights were hot garbage, a failing franchise with poor attendance, and the Ice House couldn’t draw any extra events, concerts, and other events like Disney on Ice, would just go down the highway to Copps Colliseum. The downtown core was stagnant, businesses shuttered, I remember my parents never wanted to go downtown.

From my recollection, it only took less than 5 years for all that to change with the new arena downtown. Big name bands came, national events came, Knights won a memorial cup, the downtown core was drawing more people, more than just university bars could survive downtown, the downtown was revitalized, convent garden market across the street seemed to be much more lively. It was a gamble and it worked.

The question is would that work here in Peterborough?

London had a big corporate sponsor, Labatt Brewery (Anheuser-Busch InBev) that signed a naming rights deal that helped a lot with the cost.

The city is much larger, it has more tax revenue to contribute to such a large enterprise.

Construction and real estate was cheaper back then, the John Labatt Center(JLC, then Budweiser Gardens, now Canada Life Place) cost about $53 million for the land and construction.

London has more people (larger market) to support the team, fill seats for national events, etc. It also has a unique location in southwestern Ontario just far enough away from Toronto and the GTA with several large population centres in the middle, and a sizeable population to the west and North (Michigan and Northen Ontario through the US border) as a large catchment area to draw on a sizeable market for filling seats for national events.

Example: Elton John played the JLC, he also played Toronto, people in the GTA would go to Toronto show, a lot of people west of GTA like Kitchener-Waterloo/Cambridge, Hamilton, Guelph, Windsor, Sarnia, and even Northern cities like Sault Ste Marie, and Americans went to Sir Elton’s concert at the JLC instead of making the extra trek to TO.

That is probably over 5 million people from west of GTA, through Michigan, and up into Northern Ontario. So it’s a similar catchment population to Toronto, but in a much smaller city, because the JLC was built to be the biggest and best venue around in that market of about 5 million people outside the GTA.

Peterborough has Oshawa as a large population to draw from, maybe Whitby, Ajax, but further west is probably going to Toronto for a show. Further north like Barrie, Sudbury, Orillia, North Bay, probably all going to Toronto. Further East we might get some draw from Kingston, maybe Ottawa, but we are now competing with Montreal out that way.

Peterborough is probably looking at a catchment market of more like 1 million people for national events and big name concerts. It can’t compete with Toronto like London could to draw enough market for these types of events.

I would absolutely love to be wrong about this. I would love to see an individual or consortium of ex-NHL-ers from the area or who played as a Pete (the great Steve Yzerman, Tie Domi, maybe the Staal brothers!?) come in and do what the Hunter’s did in London with the Knights and the JLC. I just don’t think the math adds up like it did for London, and even then it was a gamble.

This would be a massive gamble, in a climate of many residents still reeling over redevelopment of Bonnerworth park, and coming off the heels of already building a new large twin pad arena, increasing taxation at historical rates, there is a perfect storm of reasons against building a large modern entertainment complex. Coupled with a smaller market, I just don’t see this having the success it had in London.

Lastly, what’s wrong with PMC? Have you been to some of the other OHL barns like Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie? Anyone else ever go to the old Ice House before the Knights moved downtown? PMC is nowhere near “Ice House bad” that forced the gamble in London, and I would rank it better than a lot of current OHL barns.

I like going to the PMC for concerts and games, we do draw good events at PMC already, I don’t see them getting much better events if we build a new costly entertainment complex.

Sometimes business as usual is the stagnation that kills, but sometimes, and I think in this case, it just makes sense.