For clarity - the conversation referenced was in 2011. King and someone else from the Flames came to meet the Mayor. I sat in on that meeting. It was the first time they floated the idea of West Village. The Mayor and I both talked about (relatively briefly) the difficulties of that location - in terms of cost, infrastructure environmental and therefore the financial viability, particularly with an arena. At that time, there was no notion of a football stadium (but that exacerbated the problem). It was not just speculation - CMLC had just recently completed a financial analysis of the viability of a CRL based upon the West Village ARP vision. It surmised the area would have to be built out at pretty high density with a fair amount of commercial anchors to make it work for a CRL. Similar conclusion they reached after CalgaryNEXT was released.
A couple years later, when those internal emails were written by myself, the Chief of Staff and the Mayor, there had been some more meetings with some further musings about focusing on West Village. I was reminding them of that initial conversation when West Village was brought up. Jason Markusoff had FOIPed our emails on the topic for this Herald story in late 2014. I had left the office before CalgaryNEXT was revealed.
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Trust the snake.
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