Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
As an ex-Calgarian who has moved on to bigger and much greener pastures I can tell you that Calgary is a small city with a smaller city attitude.
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Uggh, what a condescending and insulting opening line.
As for the rest of the post. I've been to my share of cities that have these entertainment districts built around sports venues. In my experience they are pretty hit and miss. In my anecdotal experience, they tend to attract over-commercialized, large establishments because they are usually artificially created with a chunk of public money. You end up with lots of places to spend $9 for a glass of your favorite Anheuser Busch beverage to enjoy with your mediocre food. The live music venues consist of some concert halls where you can catch some 90s rock band trying to still live off their one or two hit songs The places tend to all be packed during the first couple years, and then people only will go to the areas during game days.
If anything, I've trained myself to stay away from such areas when visiting a city. Anything worth experiencing in terms of restaurants, or culture is almost always found in the more organically created restaurant and entertainment districts.
The Flames are important to Calgary. They are a big part of their identity. I personally despise public financing of stadiums. From what I've read they are the worst possible way to spend public money in terms of the multiplier effect. It will be tough for Calgary to take a stand on its own against public financing of their arena. It really is ridiculous that the public has to pay for these buildings so they can pay the players millions of dollars. I think thought the public opinion is moving against this kind of spending in general both in Canada and the US. It is probably a necessary evil that there will be some public spending required to build a building to keep the Flames. The financial benefit of keeping the Flames is probably over-stated, but their is a large emotional benefit of the Flames to Calgary that probably justifies some public spending. I'd be very skeptical of either Calgary or Edmonton ending up with a worthwhile entertainment district coming out of it though.