People can complain about helping "billionaire owners" all they want, but at the end of the day, the reality is Calgary does not have a big enough population where a private owner can build a $600M facility and get positive return on capital. If the city didn't have an NHL team, they would probably fund a smaller $300M public arena.
Right now, with the uncertainty of the Covid environment wreaking havoc on forecasting potential revenues for the next few years, I can see why the Flames would get cold feet in funding this thing.
Gondek and city hall basically inadvertently gave CSEC an out by tacking on all their additional requests, and CSEC took it. Now it will probably cost the city more later one when they do a new 50/50 negotiation.
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