[Barnes]

Originally Posted by New Era

I do believe they own the grounds, though iirc there is a trust or some mechanism involved.

The lease is, the Stampede operates on City owned land. They pay no property tax. All income is reinvested into the park and everything in the Park would revert to the City if the agreement is to ever expire.

The Calgary Stampede owes its survival to the City of Calgary. In 1889
the federal government sold ninety-four acres in Victoria Park for $235 to
the Calgary Agricultural Society for its Exhibition, with the stipulation that
the land could not be subdivided into town lots.11 The agricultural society
subsequently mortgaged the land to build a race track, but in 1896, amid
generally depressed conditions, it had to relinquish the mortgage to Canada
Permanent Savings Company. Following a four-year hiatus in which no fall
fair was held, several local businessmen formed the Inter-Western Pacific
Exposition Company Limited to revive the Exhibition, Its first order of business
was to petition the city to redeem the mortgage. In 1901, following
negotiations with Richard Bedford Bennett acting for Canada Permanent
Savings Company, the city took ownership of the exhibition grounds for the
sum of $6,500.12 For the next nine years the City of Calgary maintained the
grounds and collected entrance and rental fees. Through lease arrangements
in 1911, the Exhibition, now the Calgary Industrial Exhibition Company
Limited, took over the management of the grounds.13 In 1933 the name was
changed to the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Limited. Under this new
title, the company assumed expanded powers under the Companies Act of
Alberta (1929), except those limited by the lease. This situation has continued
to the present day

Given the fact that the city owns the land on which the Stampede operates
and the fact the latter pays no property tax on land within its lease, it is not
surprising that the two enjoy a unique relationship. On the one hand, the
Stampede enjoys little political interference because it operates at arm’s length
from the city; on the other hand, the two are indistinguishable. One Stampede
president went so far as to equate the Stampede with a city utility.14 In
1965, when the Stampede was applying for city-owned land in Lincoln Park,
prominent real estate man Kent Lyle wondered how the city could treat the
Stampede like a private party. To Lyle, the application was misleading and
even moot, since the Stampede and the city were one and the same.15
One has only to note the active presence of senior city officials within the
Stampede organization. Not only the mayor and aldermen, but also the city
commissioners and other high-level officials were often associate directors and/
or shareholders and sometimes occupied positions on the Stampede Board
of Directors during their tenure of office. The current city manager, Owen
Tobert, is both a Stampede shareholder and a senior associate. Moreover, city
officials usually retained their Stampede positions after relinquishing their
civic duties. Conflict of interest was not a problem for the city or Stampede;
the public questioned the relationship between them only during the two
expansion issues, and in both instances this was confined to the communities
most affected by the expansion plans. In practical situations, neither thought
it was necessary to keep at arm’s length, as shown by a traffic access issue in
1960. In order for the city to “keep closely in touch with the Exhibition’s
plans,” the Stampede agreed to make a city planner an associate director and
then place him on its traffic committee. The same applied to Chief Commissioner
John Steel, who was made an associate director so he could serve on
the Stampede’s grounds and development committee.16 To both bodies, this
represented neither collusion nor conflict of interest, but simply one agent of
the city co-operating with another to effect better communication.
Another factor binding city officials to the Stampede was its high public
profile. This was due in large part to its astonishing level of success in
attracting wealthy and influential citizens to volunteer leadership positions.

Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede - http://www.aupress.ca/books/120142/e...y_Stampede.pdf

Look New Era, I found a book online without having to visit the library.