Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle
That's exactly it. My opinion on the matter is it's clear a new Arena is needed for sure based on this city's needs:
- Dome's ability to continue to facilitate our NHL, WHL, Lacrosse teams is likely at most 10 years left of life (and those last years will be really pushing it)
- Already lossing out on concerts, so an upgrade is already much more needed now.
For, me, the debate remains on an new Outdoor stadium is required. Rigth now McMahon is good enough for the the CFL, which lets be honest, isn't exactly a top notch league and doesn't require the best facilities. But looking forward, how much more can the CFL team bring in in a new facility, what is the potential for and benefit for this city on a permenant Soccer tenant of some sort, what one off events could we go after (like world cup) and outdoor larger concernts (which we've never had really) if we had a new outdoor stadium facility. I'm excited about the idea of such a facility, but the city's need for this is much more debatable than the new arena.
The city has proven it needs and uses a top notch hockey rink over the past 3 decades, we've never had a top notch outdoor facility and I'd say it's debatable that a city with a Metro area of 1.5M needs one, but I'd love to see it.
|
See the way I look at it is Calgary was/is too small to have competed to get a team when the other sports leagues (ie. MLB, NFL, NBA) were heavily expanding. Now those leagues are too full and established in their current markets to consider Calgary.
MLS, however, is an ideal situation. The sport is already extremely popular in Canada and it seems as though there is still room to expand further. Even if we don't get an expansion team here, maybe a struggling US team would like to move to a shiny new facility and try to build a fan base that other Canadian or Pacific NW teams have done quite easily.