Quote:
Originally Posted by nik-
As such, EV went first and it's still not filled out, so why would the city pay to possibly negatively affect the development.
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Seriously? Why pave roads in the NW when we're paving roads in the SW? Wait until the SW is completely paved over, then we can focus on other areas. Brilliant!!!
You do know that if you provide incentives, like an anchor that draws people, that investment will come? This is why some malls are successful and some are not. If you have a high traffic anchor, or an attraction that will keep people coming in, you are going to have businesses follow the people and take advantage of that traffic.
I also don't understand the griping over the financing. As a first pass in negotiations this makes a lot of sense and is a pretty practical approach to financing the project. There is likely some room for negotiation, with the Flames kicking in more money and reducing the long term tax based payoff, but I think a deal is there to be done. I think the City should approach it with a target of a 10-15 year amortization of the tax money to payoff that end of the financing instead of the 30 years the Flames are talking about. That would mean the Flames kick in more money, or they increase the tax on use and event tickets. I would think the Flames are prepared to kick in more cash to get this deal done. I would also think that behind closed doors that the City would like to get this going to lessen the impact of the economic downturn. That would be a couple years worth of jobs for a lot of trades in the city, which means people staying in Calgary and spending their money there. This is also a great time to get these big scale projects going because money can be borrowed at a very attractive interest rate. Timing is crucial and there are a lot of benefits to getting this going as soon as possible. Time for both sides to put on their big boy pants and start negotiating.