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Tim Hortons Field permit won’t come until Sunday, which could be a tight turnaround

Andrew Bucholtz

The raceto have Hamilton's Tim Hortons Fieldcomplete enough to host the Labour Day Classic Monday afternoon is coming down to the wire. While the Tiger-Cats practiced at the field Wednesday and Thursday, construction is still ongoing, and many of the guardrails and handrails in particular still need to be installed. As Drew Edwards of The Hamilton Spectator writes, that means the team isn't likely to find out if it will receive the occupancy permit required until Sunday:

The City of Hamilton official responsible for issuing the occupancy permit for the new stadium says he doesn't expect to be in position to do so until Sunday afternoon – just hours before the scheduled start of the Labour Day Classic.

Ed VanderWindt, the city's director of building, says a number of tests and inspections still have to take place before the city can sign off but there's still work to be done before that can happen.

"If all goes according to what I've been told, we'll be ready on Sunday afternoon but it's up the contractor to finish the work first," VanderWindt said. "For us to sign off on the project, we need a number of major components completed."

Inspectors were testing the fire alarms, sprinkler heads and generators on Thursday but the installation of guard rails still needs to take place. The guard rails are slated to be delivered Friday and installed Saturday and Sunday.

"Until they are done, that's going to be the holdup," VanderWindt said.

That's still a lot of work that needs to be done, and there are questions about if it can be finished in time. There are also questions about the backup plans. The team's preferred backup plan if Monday falls through is to play at Tim Hortons Field Tuesday night, but that only works if things are very close to completion Sunday. If not, the plan is to move the game to the Rogers Centre in Toronto Tuesday. (Monday there doesn't work thanks to the time it will take to convert it for football following the Blue Jays' game Sunday.) However, some advanced notice will be required there. According to CBC Hamilton's Samantha Craggs, the Tiger-Cats may decide by Friday if they're going to pursue the Rogers Centre or not:

The Tiger-Cats want to let the Rogers Centre know by late Friday if they'll play the football game there, Ticats CEO Scott Mitchell said.

"I think it's fair to say (Friday) we can probably communicate with the Rogers Centre folks on what needs to happen or what could happen on Tuesday."

Despite the gap in the timing of the two steps, Mitchels said he doubted the team would be in a situation where it had both Rogers Centre and Tim Hortons Field lined up.

"No I don't think so. You know, honestly I'm really focused on this situation here at Tim Hortons Field, so as I said , those folks have been unbelievably accommodating and we'll be very respectful."

To host the game, the Rogers Centre would have to convert the stadium following the Toronto Blue Jays game on Sunday, said Jay Stenhouse, vice-president of communications with the Rogers Centre. He doesn't have a definitive time when the Rogers Centre needs to know if it's hosting the game.

Another factor is TSN. The field can't merely be suitable for spectators; it also needs to be suitable for a broadcast. That doesn't mean it needs to have all the amenities you'd typically expect (after all, TSN pulled off broadcasting from McMaster's 6,500-seat stadium earlier this year), but some elements (safe places to put cameras, wiring, etc) do need to be taken care of. Beyond that, too, the broadcaster will need to know rather soon whether they're doing the game Monday or Tuesday. Looking at their schedule, a Tuesday game wouldn't seem to be a massive problem (TSN's schedule that evening is US Open tennis coverage, but that could presumably be bumped to TSN2, which is showing a CFL replay that night). They would have to come up with programming for Monday on short notice, though.

So, there's still a lot in play here, and a lot is going to depend on how the construction goes in the next few days. Here's a video from Rick Zamperin of how things looked at the Tiger-Cats' practice Thursday:

The field itself looks pretty good there, and the stands look okay from the outside, but it's clear there's still a lot of work to do on them. It's also interesting that there aren't more visible construction workers. Perhaps many of them are inside the stadium and out of view, but you'd hope there are a lot more people working on this project than just the ones shown. In any case, there are clearly a lot of challenges ahead for the stadium; the work needs to be done, the architects and engineers need to sign off on it, the city inspectors need to sign off on it, and the team needs to prepare for their own hosting duties. That's all just to get an occupancy of 18,000 (two-thirds of the normal capacity) approved, too, and with less-than-outstanding concessions and so on. Even that may still be a tough task, and we're not likely to find out if it will work or not until very close to game day.