There should be little doubt that the Toronto Blue Jays will be sticking around for a while. After all, they’ve finalized a deal that will allow them to buy their home field, the SkyDome, for $25 million.
The original pricetag for building the world’s first retractable domed stadium? $600 million. A fair chunk of that at taxpayers’ expense.
Very early on, I came to believe that Toronto’s obsession with building a domed stadium might signal a fall from grace. Focusing on world class venues allowed world class problems to develop in Toronto’s infrastructure. Surely it was no coincidence that this, and our focus on getting the 1996 Olympics, was followed up with a decade of decay.
Now that we learn that what was a $600 million stadium in 1989 dollars is worth just $25 million today, I’m more sure of this than ever.
Update: Thinking over what I’ve just written, I’d have to say that the Skydome has produced benefits. It has been responsible for the development of a lot of foot traffic on John and Front Streets, and for the plethora of restaurants (especially bars and sports-themed restaurants) that have cropped up there. It’s possible that this area, formerly industrial land, wouldn’t have been as healthy without the Skydome.
But still, given how much economic benefit was derived out of the Skydome, did it have to be the Ontario taxpayer who paid for most of it? Couldn’t they have gotten a better deal, and a better stadium?
Jay Allen Appreciation
POGGE is singing the praises of Jay Allen after MT-Blacklist helped POGGE to despam Just a Bump in the Beltway.
And I think another sign of the fine, upstanding job Jay Allen is doing is the fact that the man is not afraid to admit when he’s made a mistake, as he does now:
It has recently been brought to my attention that there seems to be a bug in MT-Blacklist v2.x that will, upon weblog deletion, delete a second weblog.
As of this time, the cause of the bug is unknown to me as are the circumstances which would cause it to occur. With help from others, I’ve confirmed that it is, in fact, an MT-Blacklist bug, but it occurs inconsistently and is difficult to reproduce. It definitely affects v2.01b (the one distributed in the plugin pack) and may also affect v2.0e (the emergency release that works with MT 3.0D), although it’s not certain. MT-Blacklist v1.x users are not affected, as far as I can tell.
Suffice it to say that as long as you don’t delete any weblogs, you will not lose data.
Fortunately, I’m not planning on deleting any weblogs anytime soon.
Jay has asked that Blacklist users spread this news as widely as possible so that other Blacklist 2.0 users are aware of the problem and don’t accidentally lose data. Lesser men would have run and hid and created a patch with as little publicity as possible, so I am strongly commending Jay for his honesty.
And I would like to point out that yesterday, after weeks of not being the target of comment spammers, I was hit by a rash of about fourteen. Thanks to Blacklist, not a single one got through. Thanks, Jay!