CalgaryNEXT Discussion pt. 2

[KevanGuy]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Well, then I guess I respectfully apologize. I didn’t mean it so nonsensically.

FYI this kind of BS is getting VERY tiresome. Cut it out.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by nik-

It's really not a misrepresentation. It's the bill. The fact that a portion of the bill will have to be paid at some other completely undetermined date regardless of what is developed there doesn't change the fact that this is the actual cost of developing CalgaryNEXT. It's considerably less disingenuous to include the cost of something that will be eventually paid anyway, at some point, than it is to just totally ignore those numbers when presenting a price of a project.

The Herald, the Sun and the Metro all ran with headlines in and around "Flames underestimate arena plan costs by double" and you don't see misrepresentation in that?

I'm not a big Ken King fan, but he's right to say there isn't a deal if the city never planned on cleaning up the creosote, building a field house or developing the West Village.

And I've said a dozen times that I agree the cost is $1.8B if the options are
a) CalgaryNext
b) Leave it

but I think we can all agree that b) isn't feasible, and the city spun their response to for titillation and not logic.

the Flames spun their initial proposal and had my ire. Now the city has done the same and have a similar reaction from me.

Both sides are treating the citizens like idiots.

[TheScorpion]

Are there any other feasible sites for building the CalgaryNEXT project as shown, with the field house/arena combo, that would be more cost-effective and still relevant geographically?

Someone brought up the North Hill Mall site, right by SAIT and Kensington. IMO, that’s the best option for the city. Would there be enough space there for both complexes?

[Kavvy]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Are there any other feasible sites for building the CalgaryNEXT project as shown, with the field house/arena combo, that would be more cost-effective and still relevant geographically?

Someone brought up the North Hill Mall site, right by SAIT and Kensington. IMO, that’s the best option for the city. Would there be enough space there for both complexes?

Joining the field house with the stamps is a horrible idea.

The need for the field house is not solved by not letting armatures in due to practices, concerts, games and any other event.

Field house funding should be in no way connected to the stamps. Horrible and a scummy idea by the flames to get a free stadium.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Joining the field house with the stamps is a horrible idea.

The need for the field house is not solved by not letting armatures in due to practices, concerts, games and any other event.

Field house funding should be in no way connected to the stamps. Horrible and a scummy idea by the flames to get a free stadium.

Sorry, I don’t exactly get what you mean by this.

Isn’t the very idea of the field house to serve as a replacement for McMahon?

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Joining the field house with the stamps is a horrible idea.

The need for the field house is not solved by not letting armatures in due to practices, concerts, games and any other event.

Field house funding should be in no way connected to the stamps. Horrible and a scummy idea by the flames to get a free stadium.

The guy from Calgary Sport was on Fan960 today and basically said he didn't see a lot of conflict in schedule between amateur athletics and the Stampeders as long as everyone was up front about their intentions and what "prime time" means.

Stamps only have 10 home dates and practice in the morning.

They felt that primetime was mid afternoon to early evening.

[TheScorpion]

And Bingo, the Stamps could also reduce some of their time in the field house by practicing in McMahon.

Allow other tenants to use it more while they practice elsewhere. McMahon’s only 5 minutes away from North Hill Mall.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Field house funding should be in no way connected to the stamps. Horrible and a scummy idea by the flames to get a free stadium.

Free? The Stamps would add $200 million to the city's $200 million. There is no doubt they are piggybacking on the fieldhouse but they are paying as well as the $200 million from the city alone wouldn't cover the requirements of a CFL field that can sit 30k with locker rooms, etc.

[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.

Basically, as Kavvy said, it appears the Stamps/Flames are attempting to get the city to pay for a huge chunk of their new stadium by calling it a fieldhouse. It may be altruistic on the part of the Stamps but I doubt it. They just want the money.

If we're going to do what is best for the amateur athletes, we will see a fieldhouse build in another location that has nothing to do with the Stamps stadium.

[Erick Estrada]

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.

Basically, as Kavvy said, it appears the Stamps/Flames are attempting to get the city to pay for a huge chunk of their new stadium by calling it a fieldhouse. It may be altruistic on the part of the Stamps but I doubt it. They just want the money.

If we're going to do what is best for the amateur athletes, we will see a fieldhouse build in another location that has nothing to do with the Stamps stadium.

How exactly would sharing the fieldhouse with the Stampeders compromise the amateur athletes use of the facility? Again this is just sensationalizing.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The Herald, the Sun and the Metro all ran with headlines in and around "Flames underestimate arena plan costs by double" and you don't see misrepresentation in that?

I'm not a big Ken King fan, but he's right to say there isn't a deal if the city never planned on cleaning up the creosote, building a field house or developing the West Village.

And I've said a dozen times that I agree the cost is $1.8B if the options are
a) CalgaryNext
b) Leave it

but I think we can all agree that b) isn't feasible, and the city spun their response to for titillation and not logic.

the Flames spun their initial proposal and had my ire. Now the city has done the same and have a similar reaction from me.

Both sides are treating the citizens like idiots.

Ok, fair, but that's newspapers sensationalizing, not the city. The City presented the cost required to get CalgaryNEXT online.

There's also the factor of recouping the costs, at least partially, of remediation which is much more likely with East Village type development rather than a CalgaryNEXT setup.

[smalltownref]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Sorry, I don’t exactly get what you mean by this.

Isn’t the very idea of the field house to serve as a replacement for McMahon?

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.

[MBates]

Originally Posted by New Era

- This is our only chance to cleanup WV!

Well, history sure seems to support this claim. Some of us have watched this whole story unfold for a very long time, likely what is your entire life. This has been a problem for almost half a century and there is no end in sight. How many failed proposals do there have to be before you wake up and realize that the only way this land is going to get cleaned up is through a public works project? You can sit there and act all smug, but you obviously don't know anything about the history of Calgary or that particular tract of land. Go back and do some research to see all the proposals there were through out the years to have that land developed, but see developer after developer scared off by the remediation costs. In 50 years, throughout all the boom times when people were making more money than god, there has not been one interest to step up and propose a project that could reasonably make money at that location. So yes, this may be the only chance to clean up the west village in our lifetimes, because no one else has made it go in the past 50 years!

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.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

How exactly would sharing the fieldhouse with the Stampeders compromise the amateur athletes use of the facility? Again this is just sensationalizing.

Who said anything about sharing being the issue?

[Otto-matic]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Are there any other feasible sites for building the CalgaryNEXT project as shown, with the field house/arena combo, that would be more cost-effective and still relevant geographically?

Someone brought up the North Hill Mall site, right by SAIT and Kensington. IMO, that’s the best option for the city. Would there be enough space there for both complexes?

North Hill mall would never be a site, they built some condos a few years ago that connects to the mall. Unless you offer a massive package to get them out of the units it won't happen.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The Herald, the Sun and the Metro all ran with headlines in and around "Flames underestimate arena plan costs by double" and you don't see misrepresentation in that?

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.

Originally Posted by Bingo

And I've said a dozen times that I agree the cost is $1.8B if the options are
a) CalgaryNext
b) Leave it

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.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Bonecrushing Hits

I have heard from a close source (no not at orange Julius) plan B is directly north of the saddledome for the rink and beside McMahon for the football stadium with the new hockey rink being the priority. Not exciting I know, but probably makes the most sense for everyone.

Honestly that is super exciting!

That is pretty much what the majority on here want!

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by Otto-matic

North Hill mall would never be a site, they built some condos a few years ago that connects to the mall. Unless you offer a massive package to get them out of the units it won't happen.

I imagine those condos don’t get a ton of revenue from connecting to the mall. And imagine if they neighboured a brand new world-class arena. Property values would skyrocket. And besides, wouldn’t the cost of getting people out of condos be far less than removing a ton of creosote from the ground in WV?

I feel like CSE has made an overly-complicated proposal with CalgaryNEXT. Why would you want to go into a contaminated area containing over 20% land you don’t own which is slightly off the beaten path to build your arena? The roads don’t make sense, the river doesn’t make a lot of sense… it just doesn’t seem viable at all. Why would CSE want to make the creosote their problem, when the location isn’t even perfect?

North Hill is slightly more central, and it needs redevelopment… but, it doesn’t have a huge, costly contamination. It’s also right on the C-Train, and near a major urban metro site (Kensington). The roads would also make more sense (there are connecting roads all around NH Mall)… it just presents a more feasible argument, IMO.

North Hill wouldn’t take long to bulldoze. It wouldn’t take 15 years to clean up the site. We could have an arena by 2020. I don’t have the skills to put together a presentation but it wouldn’t be too hard, I imagine.

There has to be some sort of plan B. I just can’t think of a better location.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Who said anything about sharing being the issue?

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 Stampeders. 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. Add in the fact that the proposed CalgaryNEXT would truly be a central location and it's far better than putting it in a quadrant of the city. There's simply not that many downsides except the ones manufactured by those that are anti-CalgaryNEXT.

[ken0042]

One of the challenges for amateur with Calgary Next as KK showed us is parking. With 2500 parking spots those will all be in use during any Stamps, Flames, Hitmen or Roughnecks games. So about 100 times per year there will be no parking for amateur sport.

Then there is the issue of stadium configuration. If there is a Stamps game, the field will be setup for football and not other sports like soccer. Maybe not the end of the world, but also not the most ideal situation.

I still contend that the plan all along was to offer something they knew the city would reject; and wait for the city's counter proposal. I still say the Flames will be playing at a new arena where the Big 4 building is now. They just need the city to be on their side to propose this to the Stampede board.