[News] CalgaryNEXT Announcement. New arena details emerge.

[Crumpy-Gunt]

Every time I rewatch the presentation it makes me upset. Ken King looks like a lousy used car salesman trying to make us eat his selling points. OH we need a field house, we could use a new football stadium, there's this creosote over here, it's super duper nasty, it will help make us the next bloody London Paris Tokyo New York. It stimulates the economy. Blah blah blah.

I've never wanted to slap someone so badly. What a #######.

Just come out and say hey, daddy - I need this new toy but I only got 25 cents, and it costs a dollar. Don't bring out your report card and all the stickers your teacher gave you.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

I agree - it should be!

What I want to see is the city negotiate some of these key elements into the project, instead of saying 'this doesn't have them' or 'we aren't interested.

I want to see discussion that improves the idea, not 'no'.

One idea I added with an edit before you quoted was if the project HAD to be on this site - would be to move the facility to the extreme west part of the site as a book end, then put all the residential, office, retail, restaurant uses adjacent to the station. Then people would walk through all that to get to the stadium/arena. This would require re-aligning Bow Trail (which in my view should happen anyway).

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Bunk

One idea I added with an edit before you quoted was if the project HAD to be on this site - would be to move the facility to the extreme west part of the site as a book end, then put all the residential, office, retail, restaurant uses adjacent to the station. Then people would walk through all that to get to the stadium/arena. This would require re-aligning Bow Trail (which in my view should happen anyway).

I agree - the space becomes so much more functional if Bow gets corrected (and is needed regardless of the project)

[getbak]

I can't see any way that they can clean up the site without moving Bow Trail. From everything I've read, the worst of the contamination lies under Bow Trail between the two car dealerships.

[Joborule]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Here's my preferred outcome:

Disaggregate the project

Build a stand alone arena north of the saddledome either on Stampede Park at 12th and Olympic Way or on Remington's lands attached to he SE Green line LRT two blocks north. A few advantages - connection to all LRT lines (City Hall Station being close + Green Line), literally zero other infrastructure costs to support, plenty of parking at Stampede Park, supports East Village further.

Renovate McMahon. I think this could be done for a reasonable cost to make it a good facility for CFL.

Build the Fieldhouse at Foothills as proposed. Better location then West Village and no compromises for what it's supposed to be for.

Develop West Village as a stand alone project as the East Village is nearing full build out.

Overall, this would be the best result, but I can't see the bolded being done unless the city is willing to fork over the most amount of dough to the project. It may make sense if you treat the area around there as a CRL as well since it would be in the cities and university best interest for the area around the stadium be revitalized with offices, commercial, and residential.

Either way, I truly believe the city will be investing a fair share into a football stadium one way or the other, because the CFL is what it is, and it's not worth it for an owner to invest 100% of money into it; especially when every new or renovated CFL stadium has had government investment.

The hockey arena though, the Flames should finance that all on their own, and get completely ownership of the facility. Get the city to chip in for the football stadium is enough.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by sureLoss

That assumes the unique opportunity of property next to an arena/stadium and riverfront won't create demand in addition to the current demand for property.

You can't tell me with a straight face that there won't be restaurants/bars/hotels/other businesses that will only exist because of the arena.

And demolition costs? How much are we talking about in present day value for something that will happen 30-40-50 years after the building is complete?

Common sense would say yes but studies have shown the economic activity around an arena is far lower than expected. The fact is that most people (I'm speaking in generality here so spare anecdotal evidence to the contrary) don't want to live near a stadium or go to the restaurant and bars by the stadium unless there is a game (most studies also reveal that area residence avoid restaurants/bars on game days). The arena would probably bring in less of a "scene" than high density, mixed use development in the area.

[Finger Cookin]

Originally Posted by Bunk

In all likelihood if it were built in this form in this location, people would gather at Stephen Avenue before the game, grab a bite and a drink there and hop on the C-Train a block over and get to the game (kind of like today), rather than it creating any new activity near or around the facility.

Spoiler!

I could really see activity near or around the proposed facility on the north side of the river if there was vehicle and pedestrian access. That probably wouldn't happen though.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

I could really see activity near or around the proposed facility on the north side of the river if there was vehicle and pedestrian access. That probably wouldn't happen though.

It would be tough. It's winter, people would have to walk around the stadium to get to that activity. The issue here would be ensuring the arena doesn't take away from the activity near the water.

[Mr.Coffee]

^ Did we have to quote the absurdly large picture?

Originally Posted by sureLoss

Just curious how do you figure your specific taxes will go up?

What has been presented by the Flames thus far proposes 3 methods of government funding

1. Ticket tax - Flames are going to pay back this loan by having a ticket tax on all future tickets sales.

2. CRL - Property taxes on future development in the same area as the arena is being used to pay back this loan.

3. $200 million for fieldhouse. City council has already approved this amount
and just needs to fund it. Your taxes are already going up because of it.

You can go ahead and argue that governments and taxpayers shouldn't be loaning money to private businesses for sports arenas/stadiums or that there is better use for that money than stadium/arenas.

But the way the Flames have presented the financing, almost all Calgarians are not going to see a tax increase.

Emphasis part is why my taxes would be impacted. It's not been funded, and Nenshi mentioned there were no current plans at all for it. So no, my taxes are not going up until they decide one day to do that which is as of now- nowhere on the horizon. However with this project, you bet that hurries up the timeline to whenever this thing is given the green light, hence why I say no. Fund it yourself if you need it that bad, because the current situation can't be improved upon enough of a material way from a value-wise perspective based on my opinion.

Also, none of those financing proposals addresses the land reclamation which can end up being a large or astronomical number. Who pays for that? The Flames conveniently left that part out, assuming the city would. That's fine, but that's more money that would need to be generated from somewhere (you and me).

Now, as for the other poster saying this was the opening negotiation point. That's exactly my problem. That's how you negotiate, you set your anchor and move in from there. Is this the deal the Flames need to get this thing done? No, of course not. However the problem is that they've structured the deal such that their "gives" won't get them anywhere close to where I think they need to be.

They are funding 25% of this project. I suspect they'll move to about 50%, and then put public pressure on City Hall by stating they've moved up their portion. Not good enough. I think they should be funding either all or worst case, about 90%. But they've set their anchor at an insultingly low level, so to get to a reasonable deal, I'm not sure the City can get there unless they tell them to simply go away.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

How dense does this land have to become to replace the missing development that is the massive footprint of an arena to make a CRL feasible?

Complete guess, but what, does the footprint take the place of 2 full size condo buildings plus a small park?

Now, take the East village as an example as an successful CRL experiment. Subtract the CRL value of 2 high rises, subtract arena debt, contentment clean up, and potential traffic realignment - how does the math add up to use CRL?

What did I over simply (as I am sure I did)?

The arena alone could be more like 4 condo buildings (at least) - plenty more for the stadium footprint.

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

I agree - it should be!

What I want to see is the city negotiate some of these key elements into the project, instead of saying 'this doesn't have them' or 'we aren't interested.

I want to see discussion that improves the idea, not 'no'.

Why should this be high on Nenshi's priority list? It's not his job to guide them towards a less stupid proposal. Bring him a 90% baked idea if you want the city to take it seriously and work towards a mutually beneficial situation.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by getbak

I can't see any way that they can clean up the site without moving Bow Trail. From everything I've read, the worst of the contamination lies under Bow Trail between the two car dealerships.

Two separate issues. Realignment of Bow is about the functionality of the site plan, not the contamination.

[Conroy4Mayor]

Originally Posted by sureLoss

That assumes the unique opportunity of property next to an arena/stadium and riverfront won't create demand in addition to the current demand for property.

You can't tell me with a straight face that there won't be restaurants/bars/hotels/other businesses that will only exist because of the arena.

And demolition costs? How much are we talking about in present day value for something that will happen 30-40-50 years after the building is complete?

No doubt there will be some bars and restaurants pop up to satisfy demand from event goers, but I doubt it would be more establishments than would come in if a half dozen condo towers or office towers got built. The economic benefit would be a wash at best. Probably worse though, because the City, as owner of Calgary Next, would not pay property tax on their portion of the site, whereas condo and office owners in those same locations most certainly would.

I did some digging on Arena demolition cost, and the most recent public figures are estimates for Joe Louis Arena in Detroit... $6 Million. Translate that into Canadian dollars and adjust for Calgary labour rates, and you're well over $10 million. It's substantial enough that it should be added to the conversation. This would be the cost of demolishing the Saddledome, which would only be a year or two after construction of Calgary Next, so pretty much present value.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by N-E-B

I made a similar claim to Weitz so here's my routine:

Delete your post you will spoil this for the rest of us.

[CaptainYooh]

Originally Posted by sureLoss

I really wish that the Flames would drop the stadium/fieldhouse component and just build the arena/events center elsewhere.

Me too. But this would diminish (or practically, eliminate) their chances of getting any public money to front-end the infrastructure costs. Arguments are being made over the upfront costs being a "loan" that would be repaid from future taxes and fees. People forget that a loan from public money is a huge liability. Real estate development is an incredibly risky business and getting the upfront capital is critical to developers. There is a good reason lenders don't rush in to provide that capital readily. If something goes wrong, the public would be on the hook.

At another angle, I suspect that the environmental cleaning cost spread of $70M-300M is a strawman. $300M is an absurdly high amount. I suspect that once the study is completed, it would peg the costs at something much much smaller; thus, prompting the easier-to-sell political decision to proceed with clean-up.

But why clean it at all??? There has to be a relatively simple and inexpensive engineering solution to stop creosote leaching into the Bow River. Think of an impervious underground barrier concept along the Bow side deep enough to stop any leaching, where it has been found breaching. After that, any public open space would be great there: downtown public golf course, park, gathering space, anything that doesn't need expensive permanent construction. However; I predict that the land will be cleaned and CMLC will be given a mandate to develop the West Village in a similar fashion to East Village, anyway.

I believe that Saddledome could be renovated feasibly. If that's not an option, I agree with Bunk, there is land to the north of Saddledome, which would work. If neither option is feasible, than the FirePark site on Memorial & Deerfoot is by far the most appropriate location for a new hockey arena, logistically.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Two separate issues. Realignment of Bow is about the functionality of the site plan, not the contamination.

So, the soil under the road isn't contaminated, or it can be decontaminated without digging up the road?

[CaptainYooh]

Can someone please NSFL this giant image?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by getbak

So, the soil under the road isn't contaminated, or it can be decontaminated without digging up the road?

I think he is suggesting that creosote cleanup is unlikely to commence until they have a plan to develop that area. The city won't do any realigning or clean up until there is a development plan and I'm assuming that development plan will largely depend on the cleanup costs and timeline.

[The Yen Man]

What about tearing down McMahon and building the fieldhouse there with the $200M or whatever? City owns it, and the Stamps can play out of it. I don't know why the fieldhouse has to be attached to the hockey arena.

Then the Flames owners can fork out the most of the money to build a state of the art arena for the Flames. Use the ticket tax idea to fund the rest of it.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

What about tearing down McMahon and building the fieldhouse there with the $200M or whatever? City owns it, and the Stamps can play out of it.

City doesn't own the site. U of C does.

[HotHotHeat]

Just read about the comment from Ken King six years ago stating there would be a new building by 2014.

How does this guy still have a job?