Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Also, the net cost to the city, with this deal, is very close to zero (it will depend on revenues that will likely be better than the conservative projections used). A subsidy that is nothing, or close to nothing, for an event centre that improves the lives of all Calgarians, seems like money well spent to me.
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This is just not a reasonable way to interpret the benefits of an arena. 130ish million in additional taxes in the rivers district is displaced from other areas of the city. You really need to exclude that from any assessment unless you really believe that the residential and commercial development occurring there is solely becuase of the Arena. I think you can make that case for the 19.1 million in street facing arena businesses but certainly not for the rivers district tax increases.
Edit: I should add to my post that the cost of the arena to the city of 160 million today using 3% cost of capital and excluding the 130ish in rivers district money and including land value seems reasonable in the current age of sports facility funding. We are getting a better deal than most and I don’t think there was much more to extract from the flames.