[BACKCHECK!!!]

But seriously, what the **** were the Flames doing all those years they were supposedly working on this project?

I think we all assumed that they were working hand-in-glove with the city, keeping it under wraps and refining the project so that it would be an airtight plan that worked for all parties by the time it saw the light of day.

Instead, after years of behind the scenes work, we see a vague general concept for an arena attached to a football stadium, and a city hall that clearly had no more notion of what was going on than the general public did, and didn't even get the outline of the project until it was announced to the season ticket holders.

For an organization that wants to get into a billion dollar private-public partnership with the city, they sure seem to have half-***ed it pretty hard so far.

I don't even have any huge insurmountable objections to the project that has been laid out so far, but I agree with Nenshi that calling this 'half baked' would be overly generous.

To carry on the metaphor of baking a cake, this project is at the stage of somebody saying "Hey, let's make it a BIG cake!"