Quote:
Originally Posted by HOWITZER
What I'm saying is that MLG and the forum are former palaces of hockey. Both of which have been replaced with cookie-cutter arenas with zero character.
Let's not do the exact same thing. I'm a fan of the term "home-field advantage" and the uniqueness it brings to sport. Example: The Green Monster at Fenway (before power hitters made it look like a small picket fence). I think the dome is a unique building in it's own intimate way. I don't know if any of you have been to the Palladium/Scotiabank Place/Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, but you feel (even on sold-out nights) that you're in this big open space of nothingness with a sheet of ice in the middle. The same could be said for a lot of cookie-cutter buildings. I for one, don't want to see that.
|
Oh okay, I misinterpreted your point. The problem for a lot of these places is that old arenas/stadiums tend to have flaws for current day use, and it eventually becomes impossible to retrofit/renovate to keep up.
The forum and MLG both eventually hit a point where having two of the smallest capacities in the league for the two largest hockey markets, and aging, dumpy arenas in two world class cities wasn't acceptable any longer, so they had to build new.
Calgary is at that point, not so much because of the age but because of a change in music. When the Dome was built, there were certainly large stage set ups, but nothing that couldn't be set up in the Dome. In the last decade, the music industry has lost lots of money on selling albums/songs, and have focused their energy on live shows, and giving the customer all they can for their ticket.
That meant huge, sensory overload style stage setups, that no longer just provide a backdrop for the artist, they now transform arenas into that artists vision. Just look at the volume of artists Calgary misses, who play Edmonton. Pink, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and JayZ, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, the list goes on. As a world class city, we have to keep up with the Jones's, and missing a good portion of major pop/rock acts makes us look pretty bushleague.
So unfortunately, even though the capacity at the Dome is fine, it has a major flaw that can't be overlooked, and because of that and other reasons, we will be getting a new arena instead of renovating the Dome.
My only hope is that they create something special, something that really stands out in a good way.