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Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
The benefit is that it's a new facility for the ground up built to today's standards and conveniences as opposed to the 1960's standards McMahon was built to. If the city spends $135 renovating how many years are they going to get out of extending the life of this old dinosaur vs a new facility? There's a long term big picture here in that you can pay now to get a new stadium or pay now to renovate and pay again to build a new one down the road. The city has got over 50 years out of this old stadium as it's served its purpose well but it's simply poor management of taxpayer to continue to invest in such an old structure.
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The $135M figure has the roof accounting for 1/3 of the cost, and I honestly don't see the need for a roof at all, especially at that price. So this is a price difference of ~$90M for full renovation (without roof) vs. $150-250M for a new stadium.
We see Regina, Winnipeg, and Hamilton get brand new CFL stadiums, and we want the same thing, which would be nice, but we're not in the same boat as those cities were when it comes to this. There's a competing interest in a new hockey arena, which takes higher priority in this city since Flames are a more popular team, from the premier league in it's sport, and it's an entertainment complex as a whole since the intention is to draw in more non-sporting events as well. Not to mention that the city is also committing to getting a fieldhouse built that's been on the backburner forever.
There's a lot of money that the city may have to invest here as it is, that they may not have the appetite to put in a fair chunk of change into a brand new football stadium that'll likely not really change anything from McMahon aside from simply being a brand new home for at least 10 Stamps games a season. And CSEC is sure as hell not going to be forking over the majority share in the costs themselves either. There's a reason they wanted the city to pay for all of the fieldhouse in the CalgaryNEXT proposal; they don't want to put much, if any money into a football stadium since they don't see the value/ROI in it.
And getting funding from the province and/or federally is not gonna happen. So I don't see there being any financial interest from anyone to invest the money that would be needed into a brand new football stadium. In the cities that are similar to Calgary in having NHL teams themselves, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto all took the approach of renovating their stadiums that were present, rather than build a new one for the CFL team. So when Calgary needs to put money into a new arena, plus fieldhouse, I think the cheaper option for dealing with the football venue is the only option at this point.
This is why at least with the Olympics, you can get other levels of funding outside of just the city and CSEC to chip in, and it can allow to get things that need money, to get the funding, all at once. If the Olympics were to go forth, it's most likely that funding from all levels of government would go towards McMahon renovation, and CSEC would get what they want - a better football stadium without having to pay for it (or little if so), along with a new arena that should have the process pushed moreso. It's also an opportunity for the city to get funding for projects that have been hard to comeby such as the Fieldhouse and Olympic Oval renovations, since you want to do as much as you can all at once while the pocketbooks are open. Without the Olympics, and funding is more challenging. So things are gonna be the same at McMahon for quite some time still if the plebiscite fails.