City, Flames must bury the hatchet, build an arena
The City of Calgary and the Calgary Flames are starting to circle each other again, like a pair of NHL enforcers on the hunt.
There is a whisper of a hint of renewed negotiations for a new rink. And that’s good.
The last round blew up during the 2017 civic election campaign. The message to hockey owners was: play tough if you like, but don’t try to influence a citywide vote.
At the start of that campaign, Mayor Naheed Nenshi mentioned the arena deal as part of the Victoria Park renewal plans.
Flames management went ballistic. They apparently still hoped for their CalgaryNEXT plan in the West Village.
It got ugly when duelling offers were rolled out and Flames employees began posting nasty tweets about Nenshi.
He won big, despite a challenge from rival Bill Smith.
That really didn’t work at all for the Flames — or the city. Everybody needed to retreat and regroup.
Time hasn’t completely diluted the bad blood. Flames CEO Ken King now wants entirely secret talks until a deal is reached. Nenshi finds that “fascinating.”
They’re a pair of world-class needlers, these two. It has never been a promising pairing.
But this arena project is vital, and not just for the Flames. It’s one key to the success of ambitious plans for Victoria Park.
Many Calgarians have seen what’s happened in the East Village. It’s brilliant. The Victoria Park “vision” — they love that word — is even more compelling.
Calgary Municipal Land Corp. is launching meetings with citizens and stakeholders all over Calgary. Gatherings will be held in every ward during an “engagement” campaign worth $181,000.
This is coming fast. CMLC is finally on the launch pad with a Vic Park plan that covers a much bigger area than the East Village.
The zone extends from 9th Avenue on the north to well past the southern tip of the Stampede grounds. On the east, it’s bounded by the Elbow River, and on the west by 1st Street S.E.
There would be riverfront residential, a warehouse district, the entertainment hub and, of course, the Stampede itself, possibly home to a world-class convention facility based on an enlarged BMO Centre.
Big preliminary projects are necessary to enable all this. Most challenging is extending 17th Avenue eastward across Macleod Trail — and the LRT line — into the Stampede grounds, where it would hook up with 4th Street.
The extension would have to go under the LRT, or over it. Engineers are still figuring that one out. The project would be expensive and disruptive, but essential to linking Vic Park to the wider city.
Another big project is an underpass at 5th Street S.E. to match the one on 4th Street.
The first one costs $56 million. We can thank Canadian Pacific Railway for those expenses. The company also wants the 8th Street S.E. rail crossing closed forever.
In return, maybe CPR could clean up the shabby scrubland adjacent to the tracks along 9th Avenue.
Finally, there’s a $23-million replacement bridge to be built over the Elbow River at the entrance to Inglewood on 9th Avenue.
It adds up to a lot of work, but CMLC has $150 million in its budget for such Vic Park improvements. One major beneficiary would be the Flames.
And all the money comes from the original community revitalization levy that helped develop the East Village.
That levy, enabled by the province, also covers the territory of the Vic Park plan.
(Confusingly, the whole levy area of East Village and Victoria Park is formally called the Rivers District, a name that hasn’t caught on with the public.)
There are plenty of moving parts to all this, but the heart of it — both geographic and symbolic — would be a new hockey arena and event centre.
It even appears hopefully on CMLC’s promotional map as “arena/event centre.”
Susan Veres, CMLC senior vice-president, describes the location: three hectares of Stampede-owned land bounded by 12th and 14th avenues S.E. on the north and south, and 5th and 6th streets on the west and east.
Both the Flames and the city like to act unconcerned about the arena. The city committee appointed to review all this will even hear arguments for the previous West Village location.
But they all have to know that if an arena meshes with a successful Vic Park revival, the result will be fantastic for Calgary.