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Originally Posted by powderjunkie
It's crazy how much misinformation is out there on the arena deal, but sadly that seems to be CSEC's gameplan.
Owning the building is not a good thing.
Solar panels are a nothing burger. They pay for themselves over the lifespan of the building. It's a totally reasonable requirement for the city to have. It's just a bad faith attempt at a wedge issue.
Your other timeline is not quite right - the original deal had 50/50 cost overruns up to $25M total. Beyond that was ambiguous.
Through COVID costs obviously blew through that provision. July 2021 is when the Flames agreed to take on the cost overruns, in exchange for removing CMLC (ie. the public interest advocate) and IIRC value engineering away things like the community rink.
Municipal election was October 2021. It's interesting to speculate what lead to the July 2021 change; one would think there wasn't a lot of appetite from city councillors to announce further corporate subsidization so close to the election, so it was probably CSEC's only option at the time aside from hitting pause/cancel.
And then the election would inform their next moves. I haven't done a deep dive into voting records and how the new council compared to the previous, but there were definitely some new councillors tripping over themselves to help drive CSEC's narrative and get the ball rolling to 'save' the deal. I would guess that CSEC would have tried to collaborate more or gone with a mutual pause-button message if Jeff Davison won instead of the Gondek = evil strategy. Hard to say what they would have done with a Mayor Farkas.
I also wonder if CSEC miscalculated their longterm leverage by hitting the nuclear option while the team was playing well. Public appetite would look a lot different if they managed a better playoff run last year or continued the trajectory into this season.
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Great rundown.
Just wanted to add that the province then got involved with a seat at the table for Ric McIver with the new event centre committee.
This week, Danielle Smith was at the Calgary Economic Development's annual Report to the Community. When asked about how the UCP will help revitalize Calgary's downtown, Smith mentioned the new arena.
I'm willing to bet money we hear something about the new area after the writ drops on May 1 and the UCP use it as a campaign selling point - even if Smith and McIver did little or nothing to make a new deal happen.