Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramsayfarian
If the arena complex was 100% user funded via the ticket tax I would say good on them, but alas it isn't. IIRC the ticket tax only covers 25% of the estimated cost, with the rest coming from the taxpayer.
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Not really though. Any adjacent lands to the arena are going to see dramatic increases in land value and that is going to cause a spike to their property taxes and that will indirectly cover some of the costs. Increased revenue from things like restaurants and pubs will add large amounts of money to federal tax revenue by way of both GST and business and income taxes, of which some will likely get trickled back to the city of Edmonton for future projects. The former arena was in a simply terrible area with limited access to eat and drink before or after the game. 104th Ave in Edmonton is set to become their version of the "Red Mile" and it will bring in a ton of tax revenue that was not being generated prior to this new arena.
The arena is not only a place for the Oilers to play hockey. Edmonton is using it as a stimulus for that area of their core, and that city greatly need stimulus in their whole core because it is a freaking wasteland compared to Calgary. How much it will help drive future economic growth in the area is as yet unknown and we will only really be able to look back 20-30 years from now to see how well things worked out for the City of Edmonton, but I am guessing they are going to do pretty well with it in the long run and when "all" of the benefits and paybacks to the city are taken into account they will not be looking at a taxpayer loss.
These places can be pretty nice to have and a really nice arena can stimulate a lot of tourism growth as well. There are more then a few people from Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, ect... that are going to make the trek up to Edmonton to see Madonna or Shania Twain. They are going to spend money on hotels and eating out and the City of Edmonton is going to see economic value from those events, and Calgary will lose any economic benefits we could have had by not being able to attract those events and that tourism because we don't have a arena that can properly hold such events.
Nenshi again shows his flippant short sightedness when he claims “I don’t think we should use tax money to bring in Madonna.”, but the real question is should we be investing and using tax money on projects that can help stimulate the economic growth of the city? Should we spend tax money on things that can bring in thousands of visitors to the city who fill Calgary hotel rooms and Calgary restaurants and who might go out and shop in Calgary retail establishments while they are here? This is something that Nenshi seems to have a real hard time grasping, it is this same thing that makes him so against a new convention center, he simply cannot see the bigger economic picture in things like this, at all, he is completely clueless and cannot see the forest through the trees in the slightest in regards to these types of things.
This city's own economy is like a runaway freight train and it is driving economic growth and development "despite" Nenshi and the attitudes of many people who refuse, or cannot see the long term economic value in large tax supported projects like a Arena or a Convention Center. A proper large scale convention center in the City of Calgary would bring huge economical benefits to the city, it would drive new downtown/core hotel development, it would bring huge numbers of people into the city to spend taxable money on things like food, drinks, taxis, retail shopping, airfares, ect...
The actual economic benefits are huge and far reaching with things like that but when people crunch the numbers they rarely look that far and the actual positive economic realities are often overlooked. Right now we are a growing city with a growing economy "despite" the fact that we have people with very little vision in power. What this city could actually do, the boom we would "actually" be in right now if some people who had the ability to see the actual value in certain large scale projects? It would make the current economic activity in this city pale in comparison.
ATM Calgary has a large opportunity to really build on our forward progress, but we are doing nothing, and eventually we are going to end up paying more later to do things that should have been done sooner, and we are going to lose "ALL" of the economic and development benefits those things that "could" have been done earlier would have brought through all those years of procrastination.
Eventually we are going to "have" to build a new arena. 10 years from now, 20? Eventually it will be less of a choice and it will have to get built. Eventually we are going to need to build a new proper Convention Center, we already needed a new one years ago and we lose (and have lost) a huge number of conventions each year to other cities because we cannot properly hold them. 10 years from now? 20? Eventually one has to get built or Calgary is going to be the only major city in Canada that willfully choses not to have an actual functional convention center at all.
We can wait on these things we actually need now, we will simply continue to lose any and all of the economic benefits and growth that those would bring to this city in the mean time... Eventually it becomes a terrible decision to wait any longer, and with the convention center that time came and went years ago now already. With the arena that time clearly seems to be fast approaching or is already here because we are losing economically beneficial events "right now" because of our lack of a proper modern arena that can handle the current requirements of large high profile concert events.
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