Quote:
Originally Posted by mikephoen
A 3rd party interested in building the arena might have a plan to buy a majority stake in the Flames as well. If Edwards doesn't plan to spend much time in North America anymore, maybe his interest in owning a hockey team is waning.
|
That's totally fair, but my guess would be that convo would start with the Edwards selling the team, rather than joining the build project. To you point then, it would need to be someone local who just wants to own a hockey team in Calgary, because it's not like ROI on this is going to have investors lining up with their money. There's a reason these projects are such tough go in small Canadian markets.........it's because they aren't rock solid investments. It requires a motivated owner willing to invest a bunch of money for much less return they could get investing that money elsewhere because they want to own a hockey team, or are passionate about doing so in that specific community (or both). AND it requires municipal government who believes a facility like this and having a major tenant like an NHL franchise is beneficial to growing the city an the quality of life for their residents. You need both to make it work.
For the record, I actually believe both CSEC (Edwards) and the City are motivated for the reasons above and want this project to happen, so I believe it will go eventually. The problem always comes with how to split the costs, when as a pure investment opportunity, it's not a good one without help from CSEC perspective. And from the city's perspective, articulating and calculating the benefit of having and Event Centre and a major tenant is not easy to draw a direct line to and communicate to your tax payers. It certainly doesn't help when you layer in unprecedented times in costs and likely some political difference on top of it to boot.