PCL in Edmonton caught a bit of flack by bringing in stuff from out of province. Obviously not all of the economic benefit of the construction of a project like this would be local: http://albertaenterprisegroup.com/ca...dering-quebec/
Sometimes, the best prices are from out-of-province contractors / trades, which lowers the cost of the project. Sometimes they're just more experienced. It's easy to say 'use local guys all the time', but sometimes they simply aren't the cheapest or the most experienced. Those factors do matter.
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Let's not pretend this process would move along without some degree of coercion. This is the standard playbook for all leagues in North America and it has worked in the majority of cases. Like it or not, there will be a significant amount of public funds going into any arena project. Unfortunately we don't have a wealthy owner willing to shower the city in money with no prospect of recouping the investment. I see both sides digging in for a protracted struggle over this arena project. I'm not a huge fan of the project in its current state, but nothing else has been presented to provide a compelling alternative.
CalgaryNEXT was just a moronic proposal. There wasn't enough there to convince people in the current economic climate. And the amateur renderings due to lack of preparation to that point made it all the more embarrassing.
The fact that there wasn't a plan B or C even given real consideration made it much worse.
If the Flames didn't take the Stamps under its wing maybe we'd be looking at a new hockey arena going up in two or three years. The fieldhouse/stamps/olympics aspirations just furthered the timeline by who knows how many years.
Just get a new damn arena in. At least that's feasible in the relatively short term.
Last Week Tonight did a story about how the ultimate purpose of pro sports teams is so that owners can extort free stadiums from host cities. Winning is nice, but a free stadium is the far superior return on investment.
Last edited by Matata; 01-11-2016 at 05:44 PM.
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Ughh, can this get anymore tiring? Bettman plays the "you better get on board Calgary, or maybe bad things will happen" and Nenshi chimes in with, "we don't need no fancy New Yorker telling us what to do" schtick.
I get that both are trying to play to their respective constituencies, but please, just get on with understanding what works and what doesn't and move toward a plan that could actually work.
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From HFBoard oiler fan, in analyzing MacT's management:
O.K. there has been a lot of talk on whether or not MacTavish has actually done a good job for us, most fans on this board are very basic in their analysis and I feel would change their opinion entirely if the team was successful.
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If the Flames didn't take the Stamps under its wing maybe we'd be looking at a new hockey arena going up in two or three years. The fieldhouse/stamps/olympics aspirations just furthered the timeline by who knows how many years.
This is an interesting point. While the Stamps franchise may have value as an investment in itself, the added profit the Flames franchise has bought itself can't be more than something on the order of a few million bucks/year, if that. It's really a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall CSEC operation.
Is the Flames organization going to allow itself to lose out on (presumably) tens of millions in new-arena revenue while they hold out for the "mega-project" that includes their "little brother?" That doesn't seem like the wisest of decisions to me.
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Sometimes, the best prices are from out-of-province contractors / trades, which lowers the cost of the project. Sometimes they're just more experienced. It's easy to say 'use local guys all the time', but sometimes they simply aren't the cheapest or the most experienced. Those factors do matter.
Absolutely. If tax dollars are being used, I would like to see them be used efficiently. It does, however, take some air out of the "construction benefits the local economy" argument if some of the money is going out of town or out of province. No doubt there would be a positive impact, just maybe not as big as some people might spin it.
Bettman is so oblivious, people are losing their jobs in Alberta by the hundreds to thousands, and he wants the public to buy a hockey team an arena?
Bettman isn't oblivious. The simple fact is, people losing their jobs are irrelevant to his mandate - which in this case is to act as a booster for the CalgaryNext project. Nenshi, of course, commented on it in about as an abrasive way as he could manage without using four letter words. That was actually impressive, in its own way.
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