Quote:
Originally Posted by heep223
How do you know that the city is paying for the remediation? or the shortfalls? Or that the city is lending the ticket tax money? KK said that they'll look at commercial financing as well. And again, you're just completely ignoring any benefit the city gets from owning the land and the building and getting a slice of the operating income. That would be inconvenient to your argument.
The infrastructure would have to be upgraded to develop this land at all. Are you a proponent of letting this prime real estate sit there for another 3 decades?
You raise some good points but your reaction is pretty aggressive, given the amount of things that you don't know.
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I will admit that most of these assumptions are based on previous stadium negotiations and I highly doubt that Nenshi would go for lending the 250 for the ticket tax. But people are still defending the city doing this and I am assuming that the Flames would push for this (low interest, can use the benefit argument). Remediation will be a provincial/municipal cost as KK noted. He didnt say anything about paying that cost, nor did he about infrastructure - it can be assumed their plan is to have the city front that.
The Flames current lease with the saddledome doesnt have any revenue sharing and the majority of arena's in all leagues do not off this deal. City owned but costs and revenue go to the team.
Again, I, and several others have already commented on the city ownership of the stadium. It offers no benefit. They receive no revenue from it and it is a depreciating asset with one tenant that pays no rent.
Lastly, and again, it has been mentioned already, the land has been earmarked for development once east village is done. The city doesnt want to dilute both areas by opening them both up. The results have been great in the east village and once the area is sustainable they plan on working on getting west village going. It is a prime area of city owned land and they want to get their money's worth. This issue was raised in the leaked emails that Markusoff wrote on in the Herald. They feel the Flames are pushing the city into developing an area that doesnt have the funding to sustain success. I would give Victoria Park as an example of an attempted development cite that failed for lack of support. Not to mention the articles I posted note that little benefit, economically, is gained from arenas.
As noted, there are benefits, but I think the people on here are either looking past the issues or speculating too much on the potential to justify the fact that they really want the new arena. I do to, but I feel like there are numerous ways the city can help without paying for half to 2/3 of the cost (even 1/4 as you claim). Every arena in Canada, except Edmonton, was private money. The NY Jets and Giants 1.6 billion stadium was private money. We dont have to pay for the majority to get a quality project and the arguments used by KK and Co. are utter BS.