{"id":12119,"date":"2015-09-30T17:42:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T21:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12119"},"modified":"2015-10-14T21:37:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T01:37:32","slug":"inside-aurora-a-sporting-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-a-sporting-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: A Sporting Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAurora\u2019s going for the 2024 Olympics.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat?!\u201d I gasped, my coffee going down the wrong way.
\n\u201cToronto\u2019s dropped out, so Aurora\u2019s applied,\u201d confirmed my friend Dave, with a nod. \u201cOh, they haven\u2019t announced it, but the signs are all there.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat sort of signs?\u201d I asked, settling back in my chair.
\n\u201cThe mayor proclaimed 2015 as \u2018The Year of Sport\u2019 in Aurora. What better signal that the Town wants to fully embrace this than through an Olympic bid?\u201d
\nBefore I could interject on how weak that argument was on its own, he continued, \u201cThen there\u2019s all the talk about the Parks and Rec Plan and infrastructure development in Town. That\u2019s all necessary for a bid.
\n\u201cAnd hotels. Why all of a sudden the big push to get hotels in Town, if not because they were needed before long because of the expected sudden influx of visitors, who would need to be accommodated somewhere close by?\u201d
\nHis reasoning was way too general. I needed to trip him up on specifics.
\n\u201cSo, where would they hold the swimming events?\u201d
\n\u201cThe Leisure Complex\u201d, he replied.
\n\u201cThat pool\u2019s not Olympic sized.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of the Leisure Complex. They have to shovel millions of dollars into it every few years anyway for some repair or other. Next time around they could just lengthen the pool and dig out a diving area while they\u2019re at it. With the Olympics several years away, they\u2019d have tons of time.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd the main stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies, and all the track events?\u201d I asked.
\n \u201cWhy do you think the Town purchased the Mavrinac property?\u201d
\n\u201cThey could never fit a stadium on a piece of land that small!\u201d
\n\u201cWell, a velodrome, perhaps. They bought it for some reason, and you don\u2019t see Council announcing right away that it\u2019s going to be a park like everyone thought. No, they\u2019re \u2018exploring all of the options.\u201d\u201d
\n\u201cOkay, so even if they could fit the bicycling venue there, you still haven\u2019t said where the stadium could go, or the athletes\u2019 village, and other venues. You\u2019d need a huge parcel of unused land.\u201d
\n\u201cThere is one in Aurora. It\u2019s not available now, but it will be soon.\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s right, the Stronach Complex. They\u2019re moving to King in a few years. All that land south of Wellington will be sitting unused. The main building itself is almost a ready built athletes\u2019 village. I even think the property has a small lake. They could use that for rowing or sailing.\u201d
\nBefore I could say anything, he clarified, perhaps realizing that even his vivid imagination had limits. \u201cWell maybe it\u2019s a bit small for sailing, but they could do that in Lake Wilcox just south of Town.\u201d
\n\u201cBut the Magna property does have a golf course,\u201d he continued, \u201cand isn\u2019t golf going to be an Olympic event by then?\u201d
\n\u201cYes, but …\u201d my mind reeled with all these somehow slightly plausible arguments. \u201cYou haven\u2019t addressed the real issue; how would they pay for it all?\u201d\u201c
\nOh, I expect they\u2019ve been squirreling the money away for years. After all, the school and regional portion of our tax bills are always really low. But when has the Town portion ever been less than at least a few times the rate of inflation?\u201d
\n\u201cAnd what are they spending all that money on?\u201d he laughed, \u201cLibrary Square? Yonge Street Development? The Hillary heritage area?\u201d
\n\u201cNo,\u201d he tapped his nose conspiratorially, \u201cit\u2019s the same as that $30 million plus Hydro Fund nest egg that\u2019s never been spent. They\u2019re saving it for something else. Something big.\u201d
\nAs Dave returned his attention to his coffee, I thought over what he said. The idea of Aurora hosting an Olympics seemed crazy. But his arguments did have an oddly connected bit of logic, and after all, stranger things have happened in this Town.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: machellscorners@gmail.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston \u201cAurora\u2019s going for the 2024 Olympics.\u201d \u201cWhat?!\u201d I gasped, my coffee going down the wrong way. \u201cToronto\u2019s dropped out, so Aurora\u2019s applied,\u201d confirmed my friend Dave, with a nod. \u201cOh, they haven\u2019t announced it, but the signs are all there.\u201d \u201cWhat sort of signs?\u201d I asked, settling back in my chair. \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-39t","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-02 04:10:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}