New Downtown Calgary Arena

[CalgaryArchitecture]

Saw this on CalgaryPuck, what do you guys think?

Reroute Bow Trail Eastbound going off onto 10 Ave SW, which would need to be upgraded to accommodate the traffic.

Bow Trail Westbound goes all the way around the complex.

Fieldhouse is in the middle with direct connection for Sunalta LRT.

The Stadium located where Renfrew Chrysler is currently, still leaving the pump-house theater untouched.

In front of the fieldhouse is residential,mixed with commercial space with views of the riverfront. much like a boardwalk.

More commercial, residential take up the other parts.

[Denscafon]

if you separate the parts of the complex into separate buildings, the cost will go up according to Ken King at least, so I highly doubt they're willing to do that.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by Tropics

With the massive amount of cleanup that site needs, which will likely amount to digging a gigantic hole/trench and removing a huge amount of contaminated material from the site? At that point you are better off just using that excavation to construct a cut and cover tunnel as you are spending the money on the "cut" portion regardless for the site cleanup.

At least that gives the city (us tax payers) an added benefit from having to foot the bill for the site cleanup. I would like to see Bow Trail go underground, at the northern (westbound) side at the very least, but if they dropped both the east and west portions underground through west village that would be ideal.

With both Bow Trail and the CPR tracks the West Village is very tough to make into a proper pedestrian environment, and with the river right there and this new sports complex going in the City should be doing their absolute best to make that whole area very pedestrian friendly.

The idea of combining creosote excavation and lowing/covering Bow Trail is definitely one that should be explored.

[The Fisher Account]

Originally Posted by Denscafon

if you separate the parts of the complex into separate buildings, the cost will go up according to Ken King at least, so I highly doubt they're willing to do that.

Real translation: if we do separate buildings, we destroy our chacnes of getting $200M from The City and we really have no impetus to build a fieldhouse

[Fuzz]

There is no reason to have the fieldhouse downtown if it is separate. And that plan keeps West Village separated from the river by Bow Trail. Not a fan.

Maybe when I'm back from my bike ride I'll draw my plan. Or maybe I'll just have a beer.

[nick.flood]

delete

[PPAR]

Originally Posted by osmo

Flames won't leave Calgary...

Name a American market where you would make the same money...

This isn't the 90's, no team is leaving Canada.

Arena will get built some how some way, it's the Stadium that is the tricky part.

Well Shania Twain is going on tour, the Bluejays are winning and the loonie is at 75 cents US.... Are you sure it's not the 90's.

[Design-mind]

With all the details left out of the $890 M budget, like the clean up of the land, moving of the roads, etc, and tax payers being involved, makes this project look like government trying to pull the wool over tax-payers eyes.

I don't mind the design of the stadium, but this project seems like a very poorly planned idea that someone just dreamt up over night. Maybe even an effort to relieve jealousy of the new arena to the North. I really think this one needs to go back to the drawing board. Not a fan. Just my humble opinion.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by osmo

Flames won't leave Calgary...

Name a American market where you would make the same money...

This isn't the 90's, no team is leaving Canada.

Arena will get built some how some way, it's the Stadium that is the tricky part.

Why do we even care if they leave? If they do, or threaten to, then it just proves that these sports teams are completely irrelevent to the city.

To be honest, supporting the Flames out of any sort of 'patriotism' to the city is utterly moronic.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by izend

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was thought I had read that the clean up requirements for residential vs commercial construction are different with residential being more strict?

Given it appears the earlier remediation and containment has either failed or never worked in the first place it would be very difficult to get away with much less than the full Superfund treatment.

I would tell the Flames to partner with a developer and sell them the land less suitable ROW's for a dollar. They and the developer will be responsible for the clean-up.

[Bigtime]

The John Oliver bit on stadiums has been posted right?

[Fuzz]

Red: eastbound
green: westbound
blue: pedestrian
gray: buildings

Figured I'd fix a little bit of Crowchild. I'm sure this isn't the best road design, but just showing something could be done by adding an extra lane to the bridge. This fixes the Memorial crossover pain. Traffic circle may need work, that whole area is a bit of a cluster*, but does maintain the same access as before. Primarily I wanted to get the big roads out of the way and open grand pedestrian passageways. Bow speed limits may need to be reduced for safety given there may be lots of traffic at games.

Not sure if the Pumphouse Theatre was staying, so I assumed it was. If it goes, that opens more space to maybe move the arena further west.

The biggest drawback is no direct transit access to the arena. Walking distance is about 500m. Current Saddledome is ~400m. I think it's worth the sacrifice.

An alternative for Bow Westbound would be to burry it, roughly following the pedestrian blue but I actually don't see a huge point to that unless eastbound is buried as well to kind of open up to Sunalta. Still have the railway though. And would be expensive.

Anyway, have at 'er. I'm sure there are vast improvements to be made, but I get the feeling I put more thought into this (an hour) than KK did into his....

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

I bet those greedy suburbanites in the SE and North have a net-worth much higher than the cost of the Green Line LRT. Many if not most of the households are millionaires!

By not pooling their money and building this asset they are just out of touch dinosaurs who only care about money.

You can't be serious with this argument. Most people will agree that providing public transit is an obligation of government and an appropriate use of tax dollars. Providing a pro sports stadium is completely different.

[Jay in Cowtown]

If I have to look at f'n basketball hoops off to the left of the endzone in the new McMahon... it'll only be once! lol

I'm still on the fence about this thing being attached, and I definitely don't like the stadium in those "concept" pictures... but I guess we'll see. Two stand alones is what I'd rather see off course.

Oh, and stadiums need parking lots!

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

.
The biggest drawback is no direct transit access to the arena. Walking distance is about 500m. Current Saddledome is ~400m. I think it's worth the sacrifice.

You could make the walk feel a bit shorter with a direct walkway from the west end of Sunalta to the nearest point of the stadium.

I still think having the stadium directly beside the LRT is the best option. Afterall, you want to encourage as many people to use transit as possible to save room on parking, and more people will probably use the station for the stadium than any other purpose.

[Fuzz]

The biggest problem with that is it isolates West Village so much by stuffing it off in the corner. I'd rather the community have access to the LRT than the arena.
I wonder if you could do a covered elevated sidewalk along the south edge of the buildings directly to the arena. About 350m.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

You can't be serious with this argument. Most people will agree that providing public transit is an obligation of government and an appropriate use of tax dollars. Providing a pro sports stadium is completely different.

Semi-serious. Similar market failures exist that necessitate government intervention unless you can book top tier entertainment every night.

When you look at stadiums, they are uneconomic to build in most markets. At 375,192 event tickets a year (which may or may not include Lacrosse tickets since it was different owners) and 690,399 Oilers tickets, 242,745 Oil King tickets, Rexall is one of the busiest arenas in north america, way busier than the Saddledome. To pay off $600 million dollars, ($30 - $34 million a year in payments for interest rates of 2.88 and 3.88%) you would need a ticket tax/profit captured by the arena per event ticket of $23 an event to pay off the arena in 30 years. That is in addition to the cost to actually run the building (let us be generous and assume a low number of another $10 per ticket per event) and accommodate the event (even more).

Someone at some time must have measured the price elasticity for event tickets, but I imagine it would be highly variable based on team's records, and the fame of particular artists. This leads to a problem if a lot of your events to generate sales are of a lower calibre (an artist that at the margin could go to the Corral, or a Saddledome configured to be a 6-8000 person concert venue), a group that can sell out at $60 but not at higher prices, and lower ticket priced events such as the sports teams beyond the NHL (let us not forget that you have to account for a future where it may be harder to sell NHL tickets as well).

So you have a classic market failure, adverse selection, where some potential users drop out, and then the prices go up for remaining users, and more users drop out again. You also have a market failure based on the quasi public good of arena availability, where it is impossible to charge people the real value they derive from having that one event they really want in the city but could care less about the rest (while individual tickets are excludable, the availability of tickets and the venue has value in and of themselves).

Governments in the past have solved these problems by building facilities then leasing them out based on revenue optimization or utilization optimization not cost recovery. I don't know why there is no controversy about solving this problem to the benefit of the billionaire John Gore's Broadway across Canada at the Jubilee to choose another purely commercial venture, but not for other forms of entertainment. From Calgary alone they are bringing in $20 million a year from their touring shows (based on the owner's comments in the economist).

[RyLucky]

I'm sceptical of KK's plan's ability to attract and sustain WV development, mainly because of how disjointed the community will be and the assumption that office demand will outpace residential in the neighbourhood. I think that the majority of adjacent development ought to be CC-X, with high density further south and less density as we get closer to the river. If the development doesn't reach a critical mass, it will flounder. The area's greatest assets are the river, the adjacent neighbourhoods, and the LRT, but KK's design fails to fully utilize all of these.

Here's my 20 minute sketch-up that shows how you could solve some of the problems with KK's design.



1) Move the stadium as far south as possible. Run Bow Trail EB under the bleachers. Build mall/concourse into north side of Sunalta station.

2) Align Bow Trail WB with the north side of the stadium. Develop as much as shadowing will allow north of Bow Trail to make the neighbourhood as contiguous as possible with Eau Claire and Hillhurst. Outbound traffic from downtown along WB Bow is also an opportunity for urban-format big-box retail that could serve the WV.

3) Create a new corridor from 19th St NW to Sunalta. This could hug the side of the stadium and go over Bow Trail into the Sunalta Concourse. It has to be easy for people to get between Hillhurst, WV, Sunalta neighbourhoods.

4) Build high-density residential, hotel, and office projects adjacent to CPR, LRT, Bow Trail, and Crowchild Trail. Leave no loosestrife-ridden storage yard undevelopable. For reference, a residential building 100-200 m away from the river can be 33 stories (ie. Pulse). That's about halfway between the river and the CPR. The block I've illustrated north of WB Bow Trail could be about 10-15 stories. The block adjacent to the CPR could be 50+ stories if there were ever demand.

5) Orient around greenspaces, pathways, and placemarkers along the Bow River.

6) I left 14th St/Bow Tr as is, but something needs to be fixed there.


See, it doesn't need to be scrapped altogether, just a few changes. As for funding, I think the owners (and directly or indirectly, the stadium users) ought to pay for the basic price of building a stadium on level ground, and the city ought to use CRLs for everything else.

[Socguy]

Agreed with posters who say that there is almost no chance of Flames leaving. They are in the top half of league revenue. Where are they going to go to make more? Even if they did leave out of spite, there's a dozen other teams that would gain financially by moving into the Saddledome.

There was an interesting comment from a professor on CBC radio today. He made the point that sport complexes built nowadays don't last much more than 20-25 years, which means that just as the complexes are paid the whole saga starts over. This further cements in my mind that the ones benefiting from facility should be the ones paying for it since it's far more incentive not to agitate for government to finance a new building... a business will be less likely to walk away from a structure they are invested in and instead will be more likely to renovate their property first and make it work.

Ticket tax: Ok with this in principal.
200M field house: Skeptical but willing to listen. Need to see much more detail on how the public will benefit since this money is basically building the stamps a new stadium.
CRL: Have not read anything that changes my mind that this is an appropriate use of a CRL. I don't see building this complex as a catalyst for development in West Village, so much as cleaning up the site would be. In fact, I could easily imagine that the complex would actually reduce the value of the site to the city since it would take up valuable space that more profitable uses could otherwise have and, as was pointed out, how it may become a barrier to proper integration of a unified West Village. Agree with the posters who argue that Railtown is a better site, dispite the issues. At least Edmonton had the notion that moving the arena downtown could help. Calgary already has their arena downtown. From the CBC KK radio interview today: He was asked why there were no developers standing beside him raring to go at the presentation. His response was vague: "We've had discussions and there's interest". Hmmm.

Bottom line, If KK wants this complex that's great but he should buy the land and build it himself. The City already has an arena and the Flames make a lot of money playing there despite its age.

[artvandelay]

After having a few days to digest the proposal, here are my thoughts:

The Concept: B+

I like the idea of combining the Flames arena and Stampeders stadium. There are synergies to be achieved by combining things like back of house operations, mechanical systems, restaurants, training facilities, retail, and other fan amenities. Co-locating these facilities makes sense from an economic perspective, and if we want to host a major event in the future it will be great to have a sports & entertainment district. Also, the proposed location can't be beat.

When I first heard that a field-house was going to be combined with the stadium, I thought it was a bad idea that would result in a sub par stadium experience. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Calgary is in desperate need of a new large stadium. There is absolutely no economic case to build a football stadium in Canada and there is no way that a CFL stadium will be constructed with private sector dollars. Combining a fieldhouse with this complex checks off a major want on the City's recreation wishlist and combining amateur and professional sports makes sense. Also, one of the major problems with locating a stadium in an urban areas is that the facility remains a monolithic dead zone for 355 days a year. The fieldhouse (along with the community hockey rink) will ensure that the centrepiece of this new West Village neighbourhood is active at all times, which should benefit retail amenities in the area.

The challenge with the fieldhouse/stadium is going to be ensuring that this stadium doesn't feel like an oversized Jack Simpson Gymnasium during Stampeders game day, while maintaining full utility of a fieldhouse. A second rate facility is not acceptable for Calgary when Winnipeg, Regina, and Vancouver have new (or renovated) state of the art facilities. The only additional thing I'd like to see is a retractable roof. It's not a must have, but I'd hate to lose football outdoors on a sunny afternoon.

The District Plan: C-

As many others have mentioned, this is where CalgaryNEXT really falls short. I realize that this is a very early concept and they likely didn't want to open the can of worms of realigning Bow Trail, but it doesn't make sense development wise to have 1,000' feet of riverfront occupied by this complex and a roadway. Additionally, their proposed layout severs the western portion of the West Village (residential) from supporting amenities in the commercial area at the east. It just doesn't work very well. Luckily, there are a number of ways to remedy this:

1) Keep the stadium complex in its proposed location but move EB Bow Trail adjacent to the CP tracks and shift everything southward. WB Bow remains adjacent to the north side of the complex but as a treed, signalized boulevard. This would allow for development parcels riverside, which would provide a much better link between the east and west portions of the district.

2) Same as 1, but WB Bow Trail would be buried below the complex during construction and a calm access road / pedestrian street would take its place, allowing for larger development parcels. This would be the best option, but costs become a huge concern.

3) Stadium/arena moved to the western portion of the site adjacent to the Pumphouse theatre. This is the most heavily contaminated area, so there may be some cost savings by locating the complex there rather than residential. The West Village under this scenario would become a more coherent district. The obvious drawback is a longer walk to transit and poor access from EB Bow.

Regardless, the plan needs a lot of work in this area.

Financing Plan: B

I know that plenty of people are whinging about this (billionaire owners and millionaire players!, rabble rabble, Spendshi etc.) and there is going to be a huge fight regardless of how reasonable the proposal is, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the Flames putting up as much coin as they are for this.

By putting up $450 million ($200M cash, $250M in ticket levy) the Flames are essentially taking care of the arena portion of the project with entirely private money. This a better deal than what Edmonton ended up with and more in line with the way that Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver financed their buildings.

As I stated above, there is no economic case for privately financed football stadium. We are in need of a new one and the only way this will be achieved is with a public contribution. Including a fieldhouse and community rink makes this far more palatable for public investment.

The CRL should be the main point of contention with this plan. A CRL is would likely be used to finance redevelopment of the West Village in any case. Can redevelopment of the area and construction of the complex be completed with a $240 million CRL? And will subsequent private development in the West Village be valuable enough to support payback of the initial loan? This depends on how well executed the development is.

Execution: C

The execution of the presentation thus far has left much to be desired. I realize that this is very conceptual in nature, but perhaps the plan shouldn't have been brought to the public at this stage? The renderings were weak, the district plan doesn't make sense, and the PowerPoint looks like it was thrown together in an afternoon. They've created many questions by not presenting a polished product.

Conversely, if they had developed a comprehensive plan and presented it, they risk public criticism for making backroom deals and not doing proper public engagement. It's really a lose-lose scenario.

I think it was a mistake not to breakdown the funding into different sources for the arena, and stadium/fieldhouse. Also, by calling it a ticket "tax" rather then a surcharge, they've confused people into thinking that this is a public contribution.

I'd hope that they bring in some private sector partners or consultants with experience in development. This project is very important for the city and will require some skill to get it off the ground.