John Labatt Centre Tickets Information

John Labatt Centre
The John Labatt Centre is a sports-entertainment centre in London, Ontario, Canada. It is said to be the largest in southwestern Ontario. It is usually referred to as the "JLC", opened on October 11, 2002. The John Labatt Centre was built, in part, to be the new downtown home of London's Ontario Hockey League team, the London Knights, replacing the 40-year-old London Ice House in the south end of the city, near Highway 401.The John Labatt Centre is owned by the London Civic Centre Corporation, an example of a public-private partnership. The Corporation is owned in turn by multiple parties, including The City of London, EllisDon, and Global Spectrum, the Philadelphia-based company that also manages the centre, and operates more than 40 other arenas, stadiums and convention centres. Apart from the standard end stage configuration for large concerts, the arena can be set up to accommodate touring Broadway shows or smaller concerts in its theatre mode. The theatre mode features a small, intimate atmosphere and a 30-line fly grid to suspend scenery or lighting and sound.

The centre has 38 luxury suites and more than 1,000 club seats. The JLC complies with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act and has 55 per cent more public restrooms than required by the law. The arena formerly sold tickets through Ticketmaster. The arena switched ticketing systems and now uses an in-house system, provided by New Era Tickets on August 1, 2005. Tickets are sold through the box office, via a toll-free number (1-866-455-2849 or 1-866-4-JLC-TIX) and online at their own web site. The John Labatt Centre was built at a cost of approximately $42-million by the London, Ontario-based construction company, EllisDon Corp., builders of Toronto's Rogers Centre. The land was purchased for $10 million. The construction of this sports-entertainment centre was decided upon as a part of the city government's overall effort to revitalize the city's downtown. As part of that effort, London city council committed to building the centre, and agreed to fund much of the cost, which has amounted to about $4.5 million a year in debt financing so far. Another controversial part of the management deal is that while revenue at the centre has been much higher than forecast, the city's share has been minimal, about $100,000 a year, with much of the balance going to the London Civic Centre Corporation, the public-private partnership that owns the arena.

Many businesses close to the centre also report that they have benefitted as a result of the increased number of people coming downtown. The JLC's million-dollar facade at its northeast corner is a replica of the Talbot Inn using "retumbled" yellow brick (new yellow bricks that have been scuffed up and scarred to appear old). The Talbot Inn is a 19th century building that stood on the site for more than 125 years -- a designated heritage property under the Ontario Heritage Act (facade only via a registered heritage easement). Originally planning to re-use the old bricks from the Talbot Inn on the northeast facade of the JLC, the City of London suddenly had the building demolished on the morning of Sunday, June 3, 2001 -- without a demolition permit or delisting the Talbot Inn's facade as a designated heritage property. Instead, the City of London had previously obtained a "heritage alteration permit", permits which are routinely used for minor changes to heritage properties, changes that don't affect the by-law reasons for designation. According to officials with the Ontario Heritage Foundation (now called the Ontario Heritage Trust), it is the first known time in Ontario's history and possibly Canada's, that a "heritage alteration permit" was misused to outright demolish a designated heritage property.

The rationale cited by civic officials was that the Talbot Inn bricks were not salvageable due to their moisture content after a contractor had power-washed the paint off the bricks. Some of the original bricks, however, were used for the interior walls of the restaurant on the JLC's second level and the rest were trucked to TRY Recycling in London where they were re-sold. No charges were ever laid against the City of London under the Ontario Heritage Act for the unusual demolition and the facade of the Talbot Inn remained designated under the Ontario Heritage Act for approximately 17 months after it was demolished. Prior to the construction of the JLC during an archaeological assessment of the property, the skeletal remains of an infant, believed to be from the 1830s or 1840s, were found in the soil at the site. The discovery caused an uproar and delayed construction for a few months and likely contributed to the sudden demolition of the Talbot Inn (2001). The human remains were dubbed the "Talbot Tot" and subsequently were reinterred at Oakland (pioneer) Cemetery on Oxford Street West in London.

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