Public the loser in stadium game By FRED WILSON What’s in a stadium? Football, soccer and baseball players, popcorn, peanuts and 60,000 cheering spectators .. . perhaps, someday. Intense debate and media hype about what kind of stadium, who will build it and where it will be located . . . yes. Keen public in- terest . . . it follows. _ But the interests of the public . . . that has yet to be found in the high powered political games being played out around the proposed Lower Mainland stadium. In fact if you rip the dome off this elusive arena, what is revealed is a less than Olympian competition between two political-financial groups for political and financial gain. At stake is the possible political demise of the mayor of Vancouver, or the resurgence of TEAM. But the real prizes are an enormous subsidy from the public purse to professional sports in- terests and a multi-million dollar land swindle for the benefit of Marathon Realty. When premier Bennett entered the match last week with the ap- pointment of Liberal Party hack Paul Manning to the position of ‘‘expediter’’ and investigator of the various stadium proposals, it was like naming a head office official of | one team to referee the champion- ship game. The choice of Manning was so obviously a nod to the Downtown Stadium — TEAM - Marathon Realty crowd. And it was so clearly a political knife in the back of mayor Volrich who had staked so much on the PNE > Multi- plex/stadium proposal. __Bennett’s move left Volrich and PNE president Erwin Swangard isolated and humiliated, reduced to second stringers lined up at Mann- behind the Downtown Stadium group which they had so arrogantly spurned for more than a year. Also waiting in line are very vague pro- posals from Burnaby, Surrey, Maple Ridge and Langley. For the next six weeks Manning will hear each group plead its special interest case, each attemp- ting to proclaim louder than the other that their project is in the public interest. It would be well to remember that there was very little, if any, public demand for a stadium until one was proposed, and subsequently made an election issue. In fact when Er- win Swangard was elected president of the PNE in 1977, Empire Stadium hadn’t had-a capacity crowd in years, and although the stadium was in need of repairs, Not unexpectedly, the Hamilton and Doyle concept went nowhere and little was heard for eight mon- ths until in August of 1978 Swangard gathered together 200 politicians, businessmen and media people to unveil Multiplex: a 60,000 seat stadium to replace almost every building on the PNE grounds. The only major buildings which would be left standing were to be the racetrack, the. Coliseum, the Agrodome and, ironically, Empire Stadium. Multiplex emerged from a small huddle of Swangard and his PNE board, hired consultants and a group of powerful backers with overlapping interests. The backers included Herb Capozzi, owner of the Vancouver Whitecaps, Jack Farley, president of the B.C. Lions, Once set in motion, however, Multiplex became a political foot- ball thrown right into the middle of the 1978 Vancouver election, primarily by mayor Jack Volrich who made a major commitment to the project. Volrich scored where he wanted to and in unprecidented ac- tions, both the Whitecaps’ and the Lions sent letters to season’s ticket holders endorsing his election. From that point on Multiplex had a new quarterback, and Volrich made Swangard’s obsession his own. The election was almost over before any competition entered the field, apparently prompted by the mayoralty campaign of May Brown who attempted to defuse Volrich’s Multiplex issue by counterposing” the north shore of False Creek as an alternate site. It is clear now that The two contenders: left, the F plans were in place to fix it up and add seats between the goal lines. But Swangard had bigger plans, no less than the complete redevelop- ment of the PNE grounds. A con- sultant’s firm, Hamilton and Doyle, were commissioned to bring in plans to transform the PNE into a Canadian Disneyland, the cen- trepiece of which would be a new ‘alse Creek Stadium adjacent to the Granville Bridge at right, right; Multiplex, situated just off Hastings St. to left. Don Hamilton, B.C. Lions, Conser- vative Party shaker and Swangard’s former associate at CJOR, Ted Loftus, developer with Webb and Knapp, and Jack Diamond, whose Jockey Club, as always, would be a main beneficiary of the PNE’s plans. Ernest Richardson, chairman of MacMillan Bloedel, was in charge of raising money from the ing’s door in Robson Square, 4 = emories of an epic campaign waged more than 25 years ago — and as yet unfinished — were rekindl- -ed last Saturday with the brief visit to Vancouver of Morton Sobell, the man who, on April 5, 1951 stood in the New York courtroom together with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to hear Judge Irving Kaufman pass sentence upon them — for the Rosenbergs, the death sentence; for Morton Sobell, 30 years in a federal peni- tentiary. Yet all three had steadfastly maintained their ~ innocence and around the world millions echoed the demand for their release. The cold war hysteria out of which the monstrous charge against them was contrived — they were .ac- cused of giving the secret of the atomic bomb to ‘the ‘*Russians’” — waned in subsequent years but even at that Sobell was repeatedly denied parole. He only won his release on January 14, 1969, after serving nearly 18 years of his sentence. On his way from Calgary where he had been giving a series of lectures on electronics engineering, he stopped in Vancouver to spend an evening with these people — among them Harry and Jonnie Rankin, Abe Smith, Columba Rush, Elsie Dean and Polly Weinsten — who had led the campaign to demand his and Rosen- berg’s release. And that work — at least in the U.S. — still con- tinues. Sobell is one of the key figures along with Mi- chael and Robert Meeropol, the Rosenberg’s sons, in a campaign to expose the conspiratoriai role of the FBI, a role which is now beginning to emerge bit by bit with the court-ordered release of the Bureau’s documents and files. * * * * * 2 example of what we could expect if Tory and Socred governments were to allow private insurance companies into the health insurance field — as the right-wing Fraser Institute and some doctors have advocated — comes to us in the Dispatcher, pub- lished: by the International Longshoremen and Ware- housemen’s Union. It shows what has happened to senior citizens’ Medicare in the U.S. after private in- surers have had a field day selling policies to make up for deductible clauses and omissions in the federal pro- gram. : : Readers may remember a recent Tribune article on our own medicare program, which drew attention to a new publication by the Fraser Institute which called for an end to the present system of public health in- PACIFIC TRIBUNE— OCTOBER 5, 1979— Page 2 45,000 seat stadium. “PEOPLE AND ISSUES private sector. surance and its replacement by a combined public and private system where private insurance companies could sell health insurance policies — just as in the GS: But that’s just it. The U.S. experience is a night- mare. According to the Dispatcher account, senior citizens are ‘‘falling victim to unscrupulous insurance operators’’ in their attempt to get coverage for the many gaps in the medicare legislation. Private insurers have done an estimated $1 billion worth of business selling the coverage but in hundreds of cases, the insurance sold is useless. The paper cites the testimony of one former insur- ance salesman who related the case of an 84-year-old woman who had been pressured into buying 17 dif- ferent policies. But when she entered the hospital for a cataract operation, the policies were so full of loop- holes that ‘‘not one of them paid her any benefits.”’ Just as ominous are the gaps in the U.S. Medicare coverage which leave 72 per cent of health care costs up to the individual to pay. Ominous, because that is the direction in which chiselling provincial govern- ments and ‘‘opting out’’ and ‘‘extra billing’’ by doc- tors are moving our own health care system. And private insurance companies are just waiting to get back into the action. pee ae ae we” ‘ H‘ vigorous campaigning on issues throughout the east side of Vancouver, his candidacy in several civic elections and his frequent media exposure have made Bruce Eriksen a familiar figure to thousands of people — but apparently not to those obtuse people at the Unemployment Insurance Commission. After the last of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association’s grant money ran out some weeks ago, president Eriksen was compelled to apply for UIC. Now, six weeks after his application, the Commission has called him up for an ‘‘ID check’’ and has in- structed him to bring two pieces of identification with him — presumably to establish that he really is Bruce Eriksen. : This time, the UIC may get more than it bargained for since, as is his bent, he may bring along with him several reporters and cameramen. But, of course, as Eriksen’s case demonstrates the UIC is concerned not with identity, but with harassing claimants. In fact, the Commission said that some 600-700 ID cheques a month are ordered — from that one office alone. Brown was merely the message-boy for another group which recognized in the stadium issue a solution to an old problem at False Creek. Shortly after the election the Downtown Stadium Committee was quietly formed. Its .members read like a Liberal Party — TEAM roster. The chairman and main public spokesman is Frank Rigney, football player, media personality and stockbroker with Pemberton Securities. The secretary is Martin Zlotnick, Liberal lawyer and cur- rent president of TEAM. The honorary chairman is C. W. Wood- ward, the department store tycoon whose family has been a mainstay of the Liberal Party in B.C. for years. Woodward’s corporate con- nections run through the Royal Bank to the CPR and Marathon Realty, his former partner in the ill- fated Project 200 to redevelop the Vancouver waterfront. The other key member of the committee is Gordon Campbell, former executive assistant to TEAM mayor Art Phillips, and who since 1974 has been on the staff of Marathon Realty. There are others: on the Downtown Stadium Committee: ar- chitects Rand Iredale, Neil Pelman and Richard Mann, and former TEAM parks commissioner Bill DuMoulin, to name a few. But the organizers and driving forces are Woodward, Rigney, Zlotnick and Campbell. ‘‘Those three and myself,’’ organized the Downtown group, Campbell admit- ted in an interview this week. Asked what the connection is bet- ween Marathon Realty and the Downtown Stadium group, Camp- bell would say only that he is a member of the committee ‘‘with the permission of Marathon.”’ The connection, of course, has nothing to do with sport. It is pure real estate, 170 acres of it on the north shore of False Creek owned by Marathon. : False Creek has been a frustra- tion for Marathon for five years, a gold mine they have been unable to exploit. Marathon’s ‘‘problem’”’ began in 1974 when the TEAM dominated city council voted to rezone the industrial land on the. north shore of. the creek to industrial-commercial-residential. The estimated land values jumped from about $5 million to nearly tensive holdings. _edge to the Marathon ,team ¥ _ tunately we are still without _in this league. $100 million, just with the rezoning In return, Marathon agreed that i would provide a housing mix int planned development of lux apartments, shopping areas recreational facilities, so that least some moderate or low incom! people could live there. Since that time, however, bottom has fallen out of the lux housing market. There just isn any demand for the high pri apartments Marathon wanted build. And then Marathon deci to renege on its. previous deal w the city to provide a housing m After all, this was business, - charity. The economics of the project the haggle with the city | Marathon’s plans about the sam place as the PNE’s Disneyland sion — nowhere. Until, that is, that Gordo Campbell, Charles Woodward 4 friends discovered that what Va couver really needs is a massi¥ stadium smack in its downtoV core. . r It was only.a matter of tif before Marathoncame out from shadows, and two weeks 4a Marathon’s general manager DO Murray (Campbell’s boss) went # see Volrich and offered to sell city 40 acres of False Creek for stadium. A price of $20 million wé bandied about, but that wé Volrich’s figure, not Marathon’s- What Marathon wants is to S@ the city 40 acres of undevelo land which had been vastly inflate by rezoning, on the understandi that Marathon would develop Then it will expect public money build a stadium which will start t ball rolling for the development ° the entire north shore of the Cri and Yaletown, where it also has And if in the process its politic hanger-ons in TEAM can m Volrich, the renegade from TEAM: who made his first mark on ™ political scene in a conflict Marathon, lose face so much # better. One large question emerges which there is no clear answer Why did premier Bennett give © designating Manning? One 20 guess would trace that back to high level meetings with CPR UG lan Sinclair over the MacMili@ Bloedel takeover bid. 3 Manning is anything but the ? dependent, objective site study 4” ed for by Harry ‘Rankin when Multiplex was first presented. any politician he is subject pressure, but the pressure is 00 for a stadium. Marathon’s False Creek clearly have the inside track, they will praise their downtow? as the city’s salvation. But hypocrisy is tissue thin, and inad tion to the blood money deman by Marathon, it makes no senms> build a massive regional facility downtown Vancouver. That is ¥™ the GVRD’s liveable region p! all about. The PNE will likely argue economics of a stadium an mise ‘‘free land’’, but they ca? © argue around the fact that P don’t want a stadium at the which already has too many ™ facilities. Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam -__. Any of them would be 4 reasonable site, but these are proposals for sites, not “stadi as such, at least so far. Ae As for the Lions, White Canadians, rock concert pro and so on. . . at False creek the PNE they are guarant seats with higher prices without contributing 4 — themselves. : And the public .. -