[Bunk]

After thinking about it much of the day after attending the announcement, here are my thoughts on what we saw today:

Stadium and Arena

As a citizen and a Flames season ticket holder, I would like to see a new facility within the next ten years. I think there is benefit and there is a case to be made. Similarly on the stadium side, I think there is a rationale to replace McMahon and there is synergy in combining a field house function with a stadium.

Having the capacity of the dome roughly the same or slightly less as stated by Ken King makes sense. Making it larger is not the point.

The stadium capacity of 30,000 expandable to accommodate a grey cup or other larger events makes sense to me. I don't mind it being fully enclosed as long as the roof is translucent. The only thing worse than being outside on a freezing cold day is being inside without sunlight on a nice sunny warm day. Combining the stadium with the field house function makes sense to me and there is justification for public spending for this component (more on this below).

Overall District Design

This is where I start to have issues

First, the real point of having an arena or stadium "district" like this is to use the activity of the sporting facility to spin off other complementary uses that create a destination and gathering place in the city. KK said he didn't want a 17th avenue type thing, that's fine, but this seems to so far lack a real place associated with the stadium and arena.

The main entry point is via Sunalta LRT station. It seems to just take people directly from the platform, onto a bridge and right inside to the stadium/arena. The thing that gets me excited about places like LA Live or Edmonton Arena district is that there is a sense of arrival in a vibrant public square with restaurants and bars and an exciting vibe. This needs something like that.

The arena/and stadium itself the way it's situated and the fact that Bow Trail is not realigned at all makes the facility somewhat isolated and isolating. The residential/commercial and other associated development seems detached from the stadium/arena itself. It's unclear how people living in this area could access the Sunalta LRT - there is no apparent way to cross Bow Trail

The site's greatest asset, the Bow River frontage is still largely cut off and orphaned by virtue of a freeway style road that is west-bound Bow Trail. Despite cost, it is a massive mistake to leave the road configuration how it currently is. Ken King himself called it less than ideal.

The presentation through the renderings was also poor quality. I was almost certain the image that leaked last night must be a hoax. Even someone with fairly basic photoshop skills could do a better job. Perspectives are wrong, shadows are wrong, you have condo buildings touching the LRT guideway, etc.

Funding Proposal

This is where things get even tougher

$200 million cash from the owners

Not quite enough in my opinion. This is an $890 million project not counting remediation. Less than 1/4 of the facility cost, and (far) less than 1/5 the overall project cost.

$240 million CRL

As it's been talked about before, expecting to pay back a $240 million loan through new tax revenue in this area is tough with the entire area developing out with taxable high density uses. It's made much more challenging when roughly half the land is taken up by much lower tax paying (or no tax paying uses) like a stadium/arena

Ticket Tax

It was a mistake in my opinion to not suggest the owners were going to backstop the loan for the ticket tax. I suppose we would assume the City would finance the ticket tax. I believe the user pay component is sound, it should probably be backstopped by the owners, not the City. If it is planned to be backstopped by the owners, bad not to say that today with utmost clarity.

$200 million from City for fieldhouse

I agree there is a strong rationale to combine these facilities so it's used more than 20 days of the year. There is efficiency and synergy as KK pointed out allocating the $200m it had planned for the foothills site and redirect it here.

The challenge is it's a priority project for the City, but it is unfunded. The capital funding available for 2015-18 is allocated, and it's unclear where they will fund the source of funding to allocate to this project. If NDP replace MSI with something in 2018 when the current 10 year deal (which payed for WLRT among other things) expires, there is a chance it could go to this project.

City land and facility ownership

I did find it interesting that KK suggested it be a City owned facility and remain City-owned land. The challenge is it's unclear (and seems unlikely) the City would realize any upside from ownership such as concession revenue or parking revenue. Therefore it's a risk.

Environmental Remediation and other infrastructure

This cost is not yet pinned down, but KK suggested it should be a City/Provincial/Federal responsibility. It could be a big cost, it maybe smaller as KK suggested based on their research, but right now is a huge unknown. Again, if it's City ownership, Flames are indemnified and City takes all the risk?

There's seemingly more questions than answers at this point, but here we go - it's good it's finally open for public discussion.