Tim Hortons Field doesn't have public water fountains, adding to its ongoing issues
The Apollo 13 references may have been prescient, as Hamilton sure does have a problem. Building a "state-of-the-art" stadium without water fountains? Apparently that's a thing, at least in Hamilton. CBC Hamilton's John Rieti reported Thursday that Tim Hortons Field didn't have free water available to the public during the Tiger-Cats' seat-of-the-pants stadium opener (at partial capacity) on Labour Day, and that there are no plans to install public water fountains any time soon:
Nobody would definitively say why the stadium, built by Ontario Sports Solutions (ONSS) with funding from all three levels of government, isn’t equipped with fountains.
Under a 20-year licence agreement with the city, the Tiger-Cats take the bulk of the profits from concession sales, but team President Scott Mitchell adamantly denied the team was trying to make money by not providing free water.
Gerry Davis, the City of Hamilton’s general manager of public works, said when the $145-million stadium is finally completed, it will only have fountains in the dressing room and office areas.
The entire stadium will have drinkable water, Davis said, but the stadium’s site design plan, agreed to by the city, didn’t include fountains.
Well, add that to the growing list of problems (including that premium seating won't be available this week, the upper west deck won't be ready until October, and "substantial completion" may not be acheivable by Oct. 4.) In 2014, though, the water situation seems particularly ridiculous. Public water fountains are available in just about any place where people congregate, and leaving them out of the stadium designs seems like a huge oversight. The team told CBC if the stadium water's found to be safe to drink, fans can bring in empty clear plastic water bottles and fill them up at the bathroom sinks, but that seems like a terrible solution; those sinks are used for hand-washing, and apart from potential contamination there, that also will create lines for the sinks (which some people will undoubtedly avoid, making the hygiene situation even worse as a result).
For those who don't feel like drinking from bathroom sinks, the alternative appears to be paying $3.50 for every bottle of Dasani water from the concession stands. So far, the team doesn't appear to be offering an option where fans can get a free cup of tap water from food or drink stands, something that even the grungiest dive bars tend to make available. It's notable that this isn't some universal design change to go away from public water fountains in new stadiums: Ottawa's TD Place has them, as does the NFL's new Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Every big stadium in Toronto (the Rogers Centre, BMO Field and the Air Canada Centre) has them. Avoiding public water fountains appears like a cost-cutting move, and a pretty silly one at that.
Of course, this isn't necessarily the team's fault. Most of the stadium design wasn't handled by the Tiger-Cats, and the construction certainly wasn't; it's a project involving municipal and provincial governments, Crown corporation Infrastructure Ontario, the Pan-Am Games staff, and a whole variety of contractors. Still, water fountains seem like something that someone would have sorted out, and it's notable that the Pan-Am Games staffers already have a plan for their events there next summer: bringing in water trucks. We'll see if the Tiger-Cats do something similar, or if they're able to find a way to get water fountains installed after all. For now, though, it's yet another problem in the ongoing saga of Tim Hortons Field.
