Looks like this headline may have been slightly premature, as the Calgary city council voted unanimously Wednesday to revive talks on a new Flames arena, whether the Flames owners want to or not:
Council met Wednesday to discuss the collapse of the deal for a new downtown arena, emerging out of an hours-long closed door meeting shortly after 10 p.m. to talk next steps.
Council has also tasked city administration with determining whether there may be other parties interested in partnering with the city. The event centre assessment committee has also been re-established.
The results of that decision are due back before council at the March 8 meeting.
That’s all a bit mysterious, as any “other parties” potentially interested in filling the growing gap in arena funding is presumably going to want something in exchange, which would cost either the city or the Flames and leave everyone right back where they started — but sure, there’s no harm in seeing if you can find a greater fool, all it costs is council and staff time that could be spent on other things.
City Councillor Peter Demong added that the vote gives the council “the time we need to really consider what the future event centre looks like, whether it’s a brand-new building or renovation of the existing building,” so a renovation of the Saddledome is still on the table, too. But so is a new arena! Everything’s on the table! Maybe somebody will see a way of building a new arena for less than $600-million-plus and still make Flames owner N. Murray Edwards happy, or space aliens will land and deliver a $100 million bill to the council on the condition they can watch hockey in an arena with cupholders that fit their pandimensional space drinks, or really anything! There’s nothing more exciting than a blank page — get out your pencils and smell them, Calgary city council!
Neil,
I have a question, which will probably make me sound naive. What is to stop a city from building 100% of a new arena, collecting 100% of the revenue from arena naming rights (which they should get because they own the arena) and events like concerts, and charging a team like the Calgary Flames a large sum of rent every year in order to play in the arena (as opposed to $1 in rent per year). What would the Flames do in this situation?
I am a Calgarian, and was pleased to hear the deal fall apart. But now our mayor is planning to move ahead by seeing if other third parties “want in” on the arena. Doesn’t this give leverage to the Flames if you show you are desperate to get the arena built?
I expect “refuse to sign a lease” would be the answer. Also, given that it’s the Flames, “run somebody against you for mayor.”
But yes, ultimately teams need cities more than cities need teams. Occasional elected officials have understood this, in which circumstances the team owners (cough Arte Moreno cough) have usually waited until they’re no longer in office and then negotiated with their successors.
Why not build the ‘events centre’ that Calgary actually needs and let the Flames figure out what they want to build themselves?
If you build an NHL level arena without buy in from the team (both financial and otherwise) you’ll end up like Quebec… a great building, but not necessarily any team to play in it.
The whole rationale for public money was that this was an events centre for Calgary, not just an arena for the Flames.
I think we all know that was just typical owner BS, but it worked well enough to get $300m in commitments out of the city (that the non resident for tax purposes team owner has just walked away from).
My guess would be the actual events centre Calgary ‘needs’ can be done for less than the $300m they were prepared to put into the Flames plan for a new arena.