Ted Rogers Bought Canada's Most Expensive Building for $25 Million. Who Paid the Other $545 Million?

In two thousand and four, Rogers Communications bought it for twenty-five million dollars. It had cost about five hundred and seventy million to build, most of that public money, and it was the most expensive building Canada had ever put up. Fifteen years after it opened, a telephone company bought the whole thing, the roof, the hotel, the field and the land rights, for less than the price of a decent office tower. You can still walk past it. The roof is still there, the trains still run underneath the approach to it, and the tower next door still throws its shadow across the plaza in the afternoon. That is the whole story in two sentences, and the reason it is worth half an hour is that nothing in it was a scandal. Nobody stole anything. The building was finished, it worked, and it is still in use today. The money went where the contracts said it would go, and the loss is what was left over when the contracts had all been honoured. There is a new piece of Canadian financial history on this channel every day. Subscribe and the next one finds you. Here is the ground we are going to cover. The afternoon in nineteen eighty-two that put a domed stadium on the Ontario political agenda, and why the weather was the argument. How the money was actually assembled, in three parts, and which of the three parts was carrying the risk. What the roof was, because it was genuinely the first of its kind in the world and nobody had a price for it. The hotel inside the building and the video screen that was the largest on earth. Then the numbers: an estimate of about one hundred and fifty million, a final bill near five hundred and seventy, and a provincial write-off that the accounts put somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred million dollars. And then the four years at the end of the nineteen eighties and the start of the nineties when the place was the best-attended building in baseball, which is the part of this story that complicates every easy conclusion about it. Start with the afternoon, because the whole thing turns on one game in bad weather. On the twenty-second of November, nineteen eighty-two, the Grey Cup was played at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Exhibition Stadium sat on the lakeshore, open to the wind coming off Lake Ontario, and it had been assembled in pieces over decades for different purposes. It was a bad football ground and a worse baseball ground. That afternoon it rained and it was cold, and the game has been remembered ever since by a nickname that tells you everything about how it looked on television. The Rain Bowl. Canada's national championship, played in front of a soaked crowd, in a stadium that had sections with no roof over them at all. Paul Godfrey, the chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, had already been arguing for a domed stadium. After that afternoon the argument got a great deal easier to make, and within months the Premier of Ontario, Bill Davis, had a committee looking at it. This channel is in a race with our British, American and Australian sister channels to reach a thousand subscribers first. If you want Canada to win it, subscribe. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 Twenty-Five Million 2:19 The Rain Bowl 5:58 Three Unequal Partners 9:12 A Roof With No Price 13:03 What Actually Opened 16:59 The Numbers 20:43 The Four Good Years 23:16 The Province Gets Out 25:00 Twice More 27:09 Who Actually Paid 29:16 Was Any Of It Avoidable 31:14 The Residual Claimant ❓ QUICK ANSWERS • Twenty-Five Million — In two thousand and four, Rogers Communications bought it for twenty-five million dollars. • The Rain Bowl — On the twenty-second of November, nineteen eighty-two, the Grey Cup was played at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. • Three Unequal Partners — The first piece was the Province of Ontario. • A Roof With No Price — What was being proposed was the first fully retractable roof ever built on a stadium of that size. Not a dome that opened a hatch. • What Actually Opened — The building opened on the third of June, nineteen eighty-nine. • The Numbers — The early public estimate was in the region of one hundred and fifty million dollars. Canadian Wealth Architect tells the stories behind Canada’s money — the booms, the frauds and the fortunes that built the country. Subscribe:    / @thecanadianwealtharchitect   ▶ WATCH NEXT: Maurice Ruddick Sang for Six Days Under Springhill. Why Did Nova Scotia Let the Mine Go That Deep? —    • Maurice Ruddick Sang for Six Days Under Sp...   🔗 MORE FROM US British Wealth Architect:    / @thebritishwealtharchitect   American Wealth Architect:    / @theamericanwealtharchitect   Australian Wealth Architect:    / @theaustralianwealtharchitect   🖼 Original illustration, including AI-assisted artwork. #History #Finance #Economics