In mid-August, some dedicated KCAL members went to the City offices on Midland to view materials that the City didn't want to put online. These montages are site plans for the dysfunctional Kingston Regional Sports and Entertainment Centre (LVEC). You should see an "All Sizes" link above each photo where you can see a much larger versions. Some things to note:

• Entrances:
  http://flickr.com/photos/kcal/230094961
• This plan segment shows the marshalling area with zamboni room and tiny truck parking area. Compare that to the "Truck Entrance" and the width of King Street on the previous photo. Somebody please explain how this is supposed to work with 18-wheel trucks.
  http://flickr.com/photos/kcal/230094944
• The 300-Level:
  http://flickr.com/photos/kcal/230112358
• This one shows how, so dysfunctional is this building, the Kingston District Hall of Fame is with the washrooms. This one also shows how tiny the "Sports Cafe" will be.
  http://flickr.com/photos/kcal/230115029

We're sorry about the dodgy quality but at least it's online, which is way more than the lazy managers at City Hall are doing for us.

Vicki Schmolka has the scoop on how the Planning Committee meeting is supposed to go.

The City of Kingston has announced a public meeting for Thursday September 7th. At this meeyting a change in zoning is proposed, and the site plan application is scheduled for approval.

Such is the rush to build this arena that there is no integration plan: it's an arena mindlessly plunked and shoehorned at the Lasalle Causeway entrance to the city. Public comment is not sought, never was.

The same bright-lights at City Hall who saw nothing odious with clobbering a private marina with an arena are now apparently in the midst of an accelerated process to delete Portsmouth Olympic Harbour and Confederation Basin from our municipal commonwealth, or at least insofar as boaters, residents, and local regatta organizers are accustomed to using them.

Read the whole thing, especially the background documents.

The incompetence of City Staff clearly hath no bounds. Wait, there's more: at Tuesday's Council meeting there will be debate on a By-Law to Indemnify Council Members and Employees against Legal Proceedings and Damage Awards or Fines. The taxpayers of Kingston get screwed by City staff yet again.

Vicki Schmolka reports on Thursday evening's Planning Committee meeting where they set the time and place for the meeting to review the site plan for the LVEC, AKA the Kingston Regional Sports and Entertainment Centre. That meeting will be held on September 7th at 6:30 p.m. in Council Chambers.

During the LVEC-ramming epoch, Mat Abramsky was an employee of KEDCO, via his father Jay Abramsky who is a KEDCO board member and a BIA mover.

Here's another thing about Mat Abramsky: He was the originator of the Youth of Kingston support the LVEC online petition that, over more than a year, managed to collect fewer than 200 signatures online, many of them clearly bogus. By contrast, KCAL collected over 4,000 signatures opposed to the LVEC, real signatures on paper, over a three week period.

We've saved a copy of the Friends' of the Entertainment website, including the list of its members padded with the names of minor children, for future generations to enjoy.

The next LVEC-related website to go dark will be watchkingstongrow.com which expires in April 2007. That website, panned by KCAL here, was described as so misleading it would never be approved to sell used cars or soap. by Claude Scilley, Sports Editor of The Whig Standard.

The KCAL website, documenting the Kingston LVEC fiasco and the excesses of the Downtown Kingston BIA (see also here), will be online until the year 2015 at least.

Here's the text of the BIA's LVEC Task Force Presentation dated February 20, 2004.

Read the whole thing.

Interesting how their semi-workable concept of using the "North Blocks" morphed into a much smaller and dysfunctional building shoehorned on just one block.

It may be days until the FriendsOfTheEC.org website goes dark. The registration information states an expiration date of 16-Aug-2006.

How is the average person in Kingston supposed to get accurate information about the LVEC?

Cynthia Beach heads the department that continuously brings us these misrepresentations.

In mid-July the City of Kingston made this announcement that the LVEC operators were not, in fact, O&Y/SMG, but Arcturus/SMG, which is a combination of Arcturus Realty and SMG.

Looking at the SMG roster of arena-style venues, Kingston's will be very small, across the border, and not, as some are insinuated, situated conveniently between other SMG venues on the 401 Highway axis.

See SMG's glorious prospects at the 5,600 seat Hershey Centre in Mississauga, SMG's only other venue in Ontario, home of the Ice Dogs, with a market population of 4,500,000 and 2,200 on-site parking spaces.

• June 2006
• July 2006
• August 2006
• September 2006

Monday The Whig published this story about naming rights for the LVEC.

The rights are expected to bring $150,000 in revenue annually for about 10 years, according to the budget submitted by the centre's private operator.

"Frankly, I think we can do better," Rosen said, adding the budgeted price was conservative.

The City of Kingston appears to be ripe for the pickings on naming rights.

Moreover, when it comes to naming rights, even John Labatt isn't immune from embarrassing events.

The Whig follows-up on Tuesday with this puzzling editorial which, among other things, emphasises constraints on the limited pool of prospects for the dubious benefit of naming the dysfunctional home of a local OHL franchise.