At the end of the day, isn’t the city of Calgary eventually going to have to replace the Saddledome with a new event center. If you remove the Flames from the equation, at some point if the city wants its citizens to enjoy a concert, an awards ceremony, kids shows, etc….the city is going to have to pay for a new event center to host those events. Regardless at some point, it was going to happen, so isn’t it better to have a tenant committed for the next 35 years rather than we spend $600-$800M as a city and hope we can get enough events to make some money back?
This reminds me of the olympics, when we had a chance to get $4-$5B in money from the government and IOC to spend on facilities and upgrades and the city voted no cause they didn’t want their tax money going to the “corrupt IOC”. Now those world class facilities we had that Olympic athletes trained at have no funds to bring them up to date, or an outdated football stadium that no one wants to go watch a game at.
Money from the city was going to be spent regardless, but people will find a way to complain at the end of the day because if they can’t use it, no one else should be able to
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