Flames to announce plans to announce arena plans in the... future...

[MotoRacer]

[getbak]

Is that Quebec City?

[shogged]

yes

[T@T]

Originally Posted by getbak

Is that Quebec City?

Nice of the OP to put a caption, It must be though, look at the french seats!

[getbak]

Originally Posted by T@T

Nice of the OP to put a caption, It must be though, look at the french seats!

I did say "Ooh la la" when I saw it.

[Tyler]

[HOWITZER]

Originally Posted by Tyler

The only thing I could think of...

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by getbak

What do you mean by "pitch from the city"?

I don't believe there's been any pitch from the city. It's been a one-way street so far with the Flames presenting their proposal to the Mayor and speaking publicly about the need for a new building. So far, the city's position (or at least what the Mayor has said publicly) is that Calgary doesn't need a new arena, and if the Flames want to build one because it will improve their bottom-line, they should be paying for it themselves.

Related to this article. Council/Mayor share what they feel would be a fair compensation from the city's side. Many consider giving the land as the city's concession. (The other new arena thread had lots of discussion related to this article /Nov '14)

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...land-for-arena

[LanceUppercut]

More not news: http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...na-nenshi-says

[Finger Cookin]

I appreciate that Nenshi and the Herald coordinated this update for a Monday.

[Fire]

"The proposed site is “very problematic,” Nenshi said, without providing details."

This seems to be new information. Referring to the cost of clean-up for West Village? Not a good start if the city and Flames can't even agree to a location.

[Freeway]

The traffic flow is also a nightmare, and the Sunalta LRT station isn't well-suited for a ton of traffic.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Freeway

The traffic flow is also a nightmare, and the Sunalta LRT station isn't well-suited for a ton of traffic.

If the rumors of a huge complex for football, hockey and probability of hotel/mall etc. are true I wouldn't want to live anywhere near that place. We are talking years of construction for new roadways/overpasses and probably 100's of millions.

I wouldn't blame Nenshi one bit if he turns them down. A complex of this size needs to go where there's lots of room and doesn't need crazy road work for the people who actually live around it.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by T@T

If the rumors of a huge complex for football, hockey and probability of hotel/mall etc. are true I wouldn't want to live anywhere near that place. We are talking years of construction for new roadways/overpasses and probably 100's of millions.

I wouldn't blame Nenshi one bit if he turns them down. A complex of this size needs to go where there's lots of room and doesn't need crazy road work for the people who actually live around it.

As someone who does live near the proposed area, I'll gladly put up with some short term pain to finally have something done about the horrible section of Crowchild North of 17th to Memorial and 14th Street from 12th Ave to Memorial.

[calf]

Originally Posted by Fire

"The proposed site is “very problematic,” Nenshi said, without providing details."

This seems to be new information. Referring to the cost of clean-up for West Village? Not a good start if the city and Flames can't even agree to a location.

I might be optimistic, but I took it more as the area provides huge logistical challenges for all sides to work through, not necessarily that they don't agree on a location.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

As someone who does live near the proposed area, I'll gladly put up with some short term pain to finally have something done about the horrible section of Crowchild North of 17th to Memorial and 14th Street from 12th Ave to Memorial.

That's the thing exactly.

iNobody lives in the West Village now – the closest residential area is separated from it by the CPR tracks – and the crazy road work desperately needs to be done, whether anything new is built in the area or not. The existing configuration of Bow, Crowchild, and 14th St. was designed and built in the late 1960s, evidently by somebody who had never seen an interchange before, but was thoroughly stoned and hallucinated how it ought to be done. Worse, they did it without allowing any room at all to add extra lanes. The city has tripled in size since then, and traffic in that area has more than tripled.

[Jimmy Stang]

That's the conundrum. The best locations for an arena, stadium, and entertainment district are going to require some creative use of the land and improvements to infrastructure. If the Flames wanted to build an arena in the middle of nowhere, they would have bought up some farmland near Balzac and it would have been built by now. Cheaper, easier, but infinitely more horrible.

Corporate seats and boxes are too important of a revenue source to the organization to have it anywhere but in or very near downtown. And that means that any suitable location will be "problematic" in some way, which does set the stage nicely for indirect contributions from three levels of government in the form of infrastructure upgrades.

[heep223]

If Nenshi is so big on inner city development and increasing density, he should put his money where his mouth is and support the redevelopment of that entire west side prime downtown land area of which an arena/fieldhouse is a great anchor tenant.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by heep223

If Nenshi is so big on inner city development and increasing density, he should put his money where his mouth is and support the redevelopment of that entire west side prime downtown land area of which an arena/fieldhouse is a great anchor tenant.

Declining one idea doesn't mean there aren't others. I'd imagine the city has their own ideas about the west end.

[heep223]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Declining one idea doesn't mean there aren't others. I'd imagine the city has their own ideas about the west end.

They sure do:

http://www.realestateforums.com/calg...thias_tita.pdf

And yet there it sits. Probably because no developer will touch it due to the contamination issues and clean-up costs. I'm sure the Flames would work with the city on that. Lost in all this is that people don't understand that eventually it will be a public-private partnership that gets this site developed, whether it's a developer or the Flames or both. But you won't see people up in arms about the city giving land to a private developer to get it going, for some reason.