CalgaryNEXT Discussion pt. 2

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

So explain to me why sharing with the Stamps wouldn't be best for the amateur athletes. You can bet having to host CFL games means that the quality of the turf will be maintained much more than it would for amateurs. You can bet that the overall quality of the facility would be higher if it was shared with the Stampders. Really there's more upside with this than there is downsides as if you have ever lived by McMahon as I have you would know that even during the season the Stampeders do not occupy the field all that much.

There could be all kinds of reasons. The location, the design, the cost, the control of the facility etc. When it gets used seems like only a part of the total package. Not sure why you think that is the most important aspect of this.

And I actually live in a cardboard box in the parking lot at McMahon so I think I know a thing or two about how often it is used.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Look I thought the Flames were disingenuous with their proposal as well. It was all spin. You can't have the Calgary buildings the oldest but bump others to new because they were renovated, ignoring that the Dome was face lifted as well.

So it's not blunt. It's spin.

They know they have to do something, they know that will cost something. If they can't do it now then say that's an issue, but don't tag the entire cost of the region to the biggest tenant and suggest they were only half right in how much it would cost.

I don't think the city was saying that the Flames got it wrong in their evaluation. I think they were saying "look, if this is getting built in WV, we need to do these things as well. This will cost this much so the price tag all in right now is this amount. Its not feasible"

I think them saying they can't do it now is entirely the conclusion that was made, the cost was a part of that conclusion, the timeline another. The City Admin made a report to council. It said this will cost ____. with take until _____. in our analysis, it is not feasible for the city at this time.

The city hasn't made a decision yet.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Parallex

For online headlines I only see the Herald with something like that... and really you've been complaining about alleged city misrepresentation when you should direct your complaints at the Herald/Sun/Metro. Really the more accurate headline would be "Flames under-report arena plan costs by half" since they didn't underestimate perse but more elected to omit certain costs.



And I and several others have replied a dozen times that the cost is $1.8B because that's what it would actually cost. You don't get to just pretend that those dollars don't have to be spent. They are part of the cost of the project. That they would also be a part of some other hypothetical project doesn't make them imaginary.

Well sure ... and I can respond as many times as you can to say that's not the CalgaryNext cost.

Something around 50% of that cost is to do anything there, the other half is what the Flames are trying to do.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

There could be all kinds of reasons. The location, the design, the cost, the control of the facility etc. When it gets used seems like only a part of the total package. Not sure why you think that is the most important aspect of this.

And I actually live in a cardboard box in the parking lot at McMahon so I think I know a thing or two about how often it is used.

I may as well come back and say; "There could be all kinds of reasons that this could be the greatest idea in the history of shared facilities."

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I may as well come back and say; "There could be all kinds of reasons that this could be the greatest idea in the history of shared facilities."

Not sure if serious.

Did you stop reading after that and just hit reply or did you continue on to the list of reasons that I provided?

So unless you have some actual reasons to back up your claim...then no you may as well not do that.

[Cappy]

I don't understand the "anchor tenant" argument.

Why does West Village need an anchor tenant (a tenant who takes a large piece of the money generating area tax free and no cost)

The Flames will not be putting any money into the contamination clean up. That is clear. It's all city/province/Fed that deal with the contamination. KK said as much in the presentation.

So if the contamination is cleaned up by the government, then sold/parceled etc., why would real estate developers have any issue with purchasing the land at that point.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by smalltownref

My understanding is that the fundamental reason why the field house was brought into this was because the city has expressed a need to promote and develop amateur sports. The Flames group I think had seen this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone... get the Stamps out of an aging McMahon Stadium, and give the public a field house that is accessible the majority of the time (during prime time I think). With any taxpayer dollars going to this building, the city wants to make sure that the public's interest in the building is protected and that they get ample opportunities to utilize the new field house to its fullest extent.

The Fieldhouse is a tough argument for KK to make.

The City doesn't want the fieldhouse attached to the project. I think that is pretty clear. The Flames want the 200 million for the fieldhouse from the city. The City has said they want a fieldhouse for 200 million. So the city is effectively spending 200 million for a fieldhouse with no professional tenant that conflicts, in a location of their choosing or spending 200 million for a fieldhouse with conflicts in a location they don't want it.

That is a tough hill to climb, regardless of whether you think the City is right or wrong in their thought process.

The worst thing the Flames have tried to do in this debacle is include the fieldhouse/stadium component

Way too ambitious

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Cappy

I don't understand the "anchor tenant" argument.

Why does West Village need an anchor tenant (a tenant who takes a large piece of the money generating area tax free and no cost)

It's no secret I'm against Calgary Next, but I get the advantages of having an anchor tenant. Having this facility there will allow bars and restaurants to open up; to serve the people coming to the 100+ events per year. Now when you go to sell condos you have a vibrant community already setup, and you get to sell them as being beside the Flames arena; without being beside the Alpha House.

Those restaurants will do extremely well on game days; in part due to the previously mentioned lack of parking. People will go to the arena early to get a parking spot, and then need somewhere to kill a couple of hours.

[Zarley]

I'm not sure why there would be so much concern over the shared aspect of the fieldhouse. There are a limited number of football dates each year and practices do not necessarily need to be held at the fieldhouse.

The Jack Simpson is a shared multi-use facility that hosts many more Dinos sporting events and grad ceremonies than potential football games at a hypothetical new fieldhouse without a meaningful negative impact on public users of the integrated fitness centre. There's nothing stopping the concept from being successful on a larger scale.

[Robbob]

I don't think the lack of parking is that big of a deal. I think more people with just park at one of the many heated city lots downtown for the $2 it costs in the evening (more money to the city). They then can take the Ctrain one stop or if the city was smart make it so you can run a shuttle back and forth easily on game day.

Should note that my preference would be a plan B stadium north of the current.

[united]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

The residents of Hounsfield Heights would kill that idea so fast. A stadium/hockey arena can not be near a residential area. It just doesn't work. The residents won't put up with the increased traffic and people in their neighborhood.

That is why WV works well because it has a decent buffer to residential.

I agree the residents would lose their minds and it would never happen, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. There are many football grounds in Europe with greater than 40,000 seating capacity which have residential on three or more sides. Works just fine. In fact walking through ordinary streets to the stadium adds to the atmosphere, as opposed to giant parking lots.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by MBates

I think this point is lost on a lot of people who seem to have strong opinions on the development 'options' and think the Flames should be told to take a hike on their proposal because so many better uses can be made of the lands.

Do people realize that the leading edge of the contamination monitoring is being done inside homes in West Hillhurst and with groundwater monitoring wells just south of Bowness Road and 16th / 17th street NW?

http://aep.alberta.ca/lands-forests/...e-testing.aspx

The creosote contamination on the site is so bad it migrated under the river and the current pressing issues are to monitor human health risks in air quality in basements of houses that already exist some distance north of the proposed excavation site. Maybe this problem is way more serious and complicated than the City wants to talk about because they deliberately bought a toxic waste dump for development land without doing any due diligence on the extent of the problem and whether it was even suitable for development.

The City is a handful of negative test results away from facing the prospect of a major segment of existing development being declared uninhabitable by humans. Is that a more realistic thing to happen in the next decade than some other magical cost-effective development of the subject lands? Its not like you have to search far for the precedent of a major gong show along the same lines:

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...y-cleanup-plan

In my view, nobody in their right mind would even consider buying that land without the cleanup already being done in advance, or getting full indemnity from public funds for all of the cleanup costs. How many private developers do you know of that would just roll the dice on whether they might have to participate (or even just suffer construction delays from) an environmental cleansing of one of the most difficult contaminants to handle from under one of the most important rivers to the people and ecology of Alberta?

It is possibly the number one factor to the credit of the CalgaryNext proposal - that the Flames ownership group would even be willing to participate in a development on this site.

The only party dumb enough to do that was the City. That deal seems so mind-numbingly stupid. There must be more to the story.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by ken0042

It's no secret I'm against Calgary Next, but I get the advantages of having an anchor tenant. Having this facility there will allow bars and restaurants to open up; to serve the people coming to the 100+ events per year. Now when you go to sell condos you have a vibrant community already setup, and you get to sell them as being beside the Flames arena; without being beside the Alpha House.

Those restaurants will do extremely well on game days; in part due to the previously mentioned lack of parking. People will go to the arena early to get a parking spot, and then need somewhere to kill a couple of hours.

But while using the last great vestige of prime location in the city, an anchor tenant surely isn't need. With its proximity to business core and the river, this would be the place to live in the inner city. Couple that with a fresh start to define modern urban living environment, real-estate developers will be interested regardless of whether a hockey arena is next door. (also ignoring the potential disadvantages of living next to an arena that some have.)

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Robbob

I don't think the lack of parking is that big of a deal. I think more people with just park at one of the many heated city lots downtown for the $2 it costs in the evening (more money to the city). They then can take the Ctrain one stop or if the city was smart make it so you can run a shuttle back and forth easily on game day.

Keep in mind a few things:
- Train fare is $3.15 each way. So two people going to the game would spend $12.60 on transit
- A C-train would be more efficient than a shuttle
- C-trains are cattle cars after the game
- Adding that trip to the end of a game makes it a later night. More of an issue for 8:00 starts.
- It isn't "one stop" to downtown parking. It's easily 3-4 stops to where most of the downtown parking is.

Those reasons are why we don't see the Chinook and 39th ave Ctrain parking lots packed full after games currently.

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by Robbob

I don't think the lack of parking is that big of a deal. I think more people with just park at one of the many heated city lots downtown for the $2 it costs in the evening (more money to the city). They then can take the Ctrain one stop or if the city was smart make it so you can run a shuttle back and forth easily on game day.

Should note that my preference would be a plan B stadium north of the current.

Forget about the ignorance of the pitch in general and overall site selection. You're making too many assumptions here. The Flames pitching to build this kind of structure without any semblance of reliable access to significant parking or at minimum dedicated mass transit, goes beyond stupidity in this day and age.

1.) I can't confirm but I find it hard to believe any downtown parkade is $2 in the evenings. Even if it is, the city, true to form would obviously toss a zero behind that number or allow Impark to do so simply to further gouge citizens attending games.

2.) Don't you think it's already hard enough to get down to games on time as it is? Forcing 95% of fans to rely on transit and/or park offsite would cause mass congestion in nearby residential areas and already clogged daily commute corridors. This doesn't even factor in the bedlam that would ensue for patrons trying to get home at 10pm on a weeknight on what would be a woefully inadequate shuttle service.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

The city wants the fieldhouse to be in a separate location as the new football stadium. The city, quite rightly IMO and for reasons that have been mentioned quite a few times in this thread, thinks that there would be negative aspects to allowing the Stamps to have their new building also be the fieldhouse.

That's not what the report says at all. In fact, the opinion towards sharing the field house among the stakeholders is generally positive.

Feedback from stakeholders indicates that complexing (or combining amenities into one facility) is generally supported as long as infrastructure (parking, route access, amenity design, etc.) supports multiple uses and high volumes.

The bigger concern is over the location of CalgaryNext in the West Village. It limits easy access for the University, and traffic/transit/parking concerns are an issue.

It's also more of an issue having the fieldhouse share the space with the Flames' arena than it is sharing the fieldhouse with the Stamps. There's no chance a kids' soccer practice would be scheduled at the same time as a Stamps' game, but there's a high likelihood that one could be scheduled at the same time as a Flames' game or concert in the "Event Centre" side of CalgaryNext. Even if the fieldhouse had its own dedicated parking lot, there will still be access and traffic issues.

There are also some concerns expressed in the report that making the building large enough to host football games might make some aspects of the field house more difficult to operate, such as sectioning off the building for various configurations. There are also some concerns about the possibility of damaging the running track during the conversion into stadium mode, as well as the time required to convert, which will make the building off-limits for other uses.

If people are generally favourable to the idea, those are concerns that they should be able to address.


I think this is the most important comment from Sport Calgary:

The reality will come down to the hard tradeof’s: i.e. the capital budgeting process. What amateur sport is getting for $200M relative to what they can get for $200M in another location or concept will ultimately be the question that needs to be answered by the City.

Right now, the CalgaryNext proposal asks for the city to invest the same amount for a shared facility as they have already agreed to spend (but not budgeted for) for a stand-alone field house. Sharing the building with the Stamps might make sense, but only if the city is ultimately getting more than $200 million in value for its $200 million investment.




From the field house report, I think the support for the project would be higher if they built a modified version of the Foothills Fieldhouse that was big enough to handle Stampeders game.

I think when the dust settles, that's likely what will ultimately be built: A total redevelopment of the Foothills Athletic Park and McMahon Stadium to be jointly owned by the city and University that will include an expanded version of the Foothills Fieldhouse with both indoor and outdoor training facilities, with the Fieldhouse at a size large enough accommodate crowds up to 50,000 for the Stampeders to use as their home stadium and a reduced capacity outdoor stadium to be used by the Dinos and Colts, either on the McMahon Stadium location, or attached to the new fieldhouse.

Under this idea, the arena for the Flames could be built north of the Saddledome, either on Stampede Park on the SE corner of 12th Ave and 4th St, or off the park property by the train tracks.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by getbak

That's not what the report says at all. In fact, the opinion towards sharing the field house among the stakeholders is generally positive.


The bigger concern is over the location of CalgaryNext in the West Village. It limits easy access for the University, and traffic/transit/parking concerns are an issue.

It's also more of an issue having the fieldhouse share the space with the Flames' arena than it is sharing the fieldhouse with the Stamps. There's no chance a kids' soccer practice would be scheduled at the same time as a Stamps' game, but there's a high likelihood that one could be scheduled at the same time as a Flames' game or concert in the "Event Centre" side of CalgaryNext. Even if the fieldhouse had its own dedicated parking lot, there will still be access and traffic issues.

There are also some concerns expressed in the report that making the building large enough to host football games might make some aspects of the field house more difficult to operate, such as sectioning off the building for various configurations. There are also some concerns about the possibility of damaging the running track during the conversion into stadium mode, as well as the time required to convert, which will make the building off-limits for other uses.

If people are generally favourable to the idea, those are concerns that they should be able to address.


I think this is the most important comment from Sport Calgary:

Right now, the CalgaryNext proposal asks for the city to invest the same amount for a shared facility as they have already agreed to spend (but not budgeted for) for a stand-alone field house. Sharing the building with the Stamps might make sense, but only if the city is ultimately getting more than $200 million in value for its $200 million investment.




From the field house report, I think the support for the project would be higher if they built a modified version of the Foothills Fieldhouse that was big enough to handle Stampeders game.

I think when the dust settles, that's likely what will ultimately be built: A total redevelopment of the Foothills Athletic Park and McMahon Stadium to be jointly owned by the city and University that will include an expanded version of the Foothills Fieldhouse with both indoor and outdoor training facilities, with the Fieldhouse at a size large enough accommodate crowds up to 50,000 for the Stampeders to use as their home stadium and a reduced capacity outdoor stadium to be used by the Dinos and Colts, either on the McMahon Stadium location, or attached to the new fieldhouse.

Under this idea, the arena for the Flames could be built north of the Saddledome, either on Stampede Park on the SE corner of 12th Ave and 4th St, or off the park property by the train tracks.

I'm a little confused. First you say I'm totally wrong, then you provide a detailed description of all the reasons I'm right? I've said on numerous occasions that scheduling isn't the only issue here.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I'm a little confused. First you say I'm totally wrong, then you provide a detailed description of all the reasons I'm right? I've said on numerous occasions that scheduling isn't the only issue here.

You said this...

The city wants the fieldhouse to be in a separate location as the new football stadium.

The report says nothing of the sort, and in fact says that there is support for a shared facility if done right.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Keep in mind a few things:
- Train fare is $3.15 each way. So two people going to the game would spend $12.60 on transit
- A C-train would be more efficient than a shuttle
- C-trains are cattle cars after the game
- Adding that trip to the end of a game makes it a later night. More of an issue for 8:00 starts.
- It isn't "one stop" to downtown parking. It's easily 3-4 stops to where most of the downtown parking is.

Those reasons are why we don't see the Chinook and 39th ave Ctrain parking lots packed full after games currently.

Welcome to the big city.

[_Q_]

I'm far from being a proponent of this project for many reasons, but the parking issue to me is a non-issue. If this thing gets built at West Village, someone will purchase an adjacent parcel of land and build a 6 floor parkade. If there's money to be made from parking, someone will figure out a way to make it.