The title of this thread should be, "Flames Organization Can't Come Up With Money to Pay for New Arena". Calgary certainly can afford a new arena - just not at the expense of all the taxpayers paying for it. Flames organization is a private corporation and so it should be funded by it's own money or through other joint ventures without any public money involved.
Secondly, the City of Calgary already said that it will support the Flames organization:
1) if it's built on public land, then that 1/3 will be paid back through tax or through lending means
2) through ticket says, which is a sharing between the two parties.
3) the City of Calgary will put in the cost of demolishing the current arena and the cleanup prior to building the new arena
To me, that sounds like a heck of a deal, especially when the private organization only pays for 1/3 of the price of the actually development of a private building!
If the Flames organization wants everything their way on private land and doesn't want to pay back what is lent to them, well eff that! Everyone pays for this, yet more than half the city probably won't even access the building more than 10 times in their lifetime. SaddleDome - if it's not broken, don't fix it. It's good where it is and it's still an iconic structure in the city. If the Flames organization can't come up with the money to build a new arena, don't build it. I'm sure all the Flames fans, including myself, will support the Flames if they're still called the Calgary Flames, but just don't ask everyone to pay a hefty price for a new private arena.
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