Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
I would think it's a major drawback to have a field house intended primarily for amateur athletics be unusable on too many nights. The Stamps are a drop in the bucket at 10 games or so. But concerts, monster trucks etc would also tie up the field house during the day.
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This is what I think as well. Sure, the City would save some money, but there is a cost associated with that savings, and it would lack of control and too many dates where the general public would not be able to utilize it.
On top of this, it would also probably become more inconvenient to use as CSEC doesn't really care so much about parking. Try going to use the Fieldhouse at the same time as a Flames home game. I would imagine parking would be atrocious, and the LRT would probably be pretty full as well.
I would rather the City get a building they can manage and that would be more convenient and open for the public to use.
If the Flames want an arena, fine, build one. If they want to open it up for the general public to use to help subsidize some of the costs, then great. I just feel using public funds as the principal source of the deal for a building that would be comparatively unavailable to the general public is a poor use of said funds. Kick in the extra 60 million (not that I buy that it would cost that much more) yourself, and have complete control and say.