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Originally Posted by Funkhouser
Nope, Calgary has a (justified) reputation of being extremely developer friendly. The zoning restrictions are limited, code is light, heritage preservation is non-existent, the city typically covers the cost of any related infrastructure and almost any derogation is negotiable. This project's failure to progress cannot be faulted on the city.
The Flames on the other hand developed a high risk concept in isolation and tried to engage the City at the same time as the public. If they had any idea what they were doing, they would have developed numerous concepts in collaboration with the city in order to determine what was an wasn't feasible, then engaged the public once a concept was more realistic.
if King did this in isolation, he deserves the axe. If not, his yes men also deserve the axe. Oiler level management...embarrassing.
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Let's be clear. CalgaryNEXT has virtually zero to do with normal City approvals processes (which, by the way have been a challenge, but are going through sweeping changes and improvements).
CalgaryNEXT was not any sort of application. It was literally a letter of intent. The City of Calgary, because of its profile has processed it, but it has been fly by the seat of the pants, because there is not process for such a 'proposal'.
The Mayor's Office wrote the framework for evaluation report. It's an exceptionally rare event for the Mayor's Office to provide a report to Council. Then the Deputy City Manager in charge of Infrastructure Calgary wrote the subsequent evaluation report with the assistance of an arms length agency (CMLC). Normally an applicant pays for processing of a development application, based on the resources required internally within the City to go through the process. It is presumed no such application fee has been paid. The City is simply doing it on its time, which is fine. This, thus far, has nothing to do with planning and development approvals processes, or even standard requests for capital funding to support development. Given the nebulous nature of the proposal (or whatever you want to call it), it's actually remarkable how quickly the City has turned around reports, analysis and evaluation.