More than location matters for arena proposal

The cliche about real estate suggests that only location matters, but size and price ultimately prove important factors, too.

Last week, the brain trust behind Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre arena and entertainment facility journeyed to Edmonton to size up the competition: Rogers Place, which opened in September.

The SaskTel Centre crew likely checked out the amenities and infrastructure at Rogers Place as a report on the future of the 29-year-old suburban Saskatoon arena looms later this year.

History should be also be considered, as should financing.

The origin of Edmonton’s shiny new arena can be traced back to 2005, when the group that once owned the NHL’s Oilers stated the need for a new facility.

In 2007, a city report showed updating the former Rexall Place arena, which was built in 1974 and seated fewer than 17,000 for hockey, would cost as much as $250 million.

The cost of updating SaskTel Centre, which opened in 1989 and seats 15,100 for hockey, is likely to feature prominently in the report on the future of the arena. The report will also focus on the TCU Place convention centre’s future.

The journey to completion for Edmonton’s new arena was hardly easy or uneventful. Edmonton city council decided to help fund a $483.5-million downtown arena as part of a $613.7-million project. It includes a winter garden, a community arena, a pedestrian corridor and a light rail connection. The arena formed one plank of a $1.4-billion plan to revitalize the Alberta capital’s downtown by the Oilers’ billionaire owner, Daryl Katz.

The bulk of the city’s funding toward the $613-million arena project — $356 million — comes from a surcharge on arena tickets and a community revitalization levy collected from developers of projects within a certain zone near the arena.

A Katz company is paying more than $112 million to lease the arena over 35 years.

It sounds simple, but it wasn’t — and any new arena in Saskatoon will face the same sort of skepticism and roadblocks Edmonton’s faced.

Despite the doubt that plagued it through its journey to reality, Rogers Place appears to have succeeded beyond expectations.

The director of Edmonton’s Downtown Business Association told the Edmonton Journal in September that the arena project has attracted $2.4 billion in private investment to the vicinity. That includes the 67-storey Stantec Tower, expected to become the tallest tower in Canada west of Toronto.

Revitalization provides a compelling argument for a new downtown arena, but the main impetus to build a new facility in Edmonton came from a desire to keep the Oilers in town.

Saskatoon boasts no such arena tenant, although the Saskatchewan Rush lacrosse team regularly packs the joint — and exposes SaskTel Centre’s shortcomings.

If there’s a rich person willing to shell out money toward a Saskatoon arena, so far he or she is even more reclusive than Edmonton’s notoriously media-shy Katz.

The big advantage SaskTel Centre boasts is its size, though not in the cramped concourses. It’s big enough to host NHL exhibition games, events like the world junior hockey championships and most major concerts. The big musical acts still come through Saskatoon because they can make enough money to justify staging a show in the antiquated facility.

It can host more spectators than most junior hockey arenas — Regina’s Brandt Centre accommodates about 6,000.

Would moving downtown mean sacrificing SaskTel Centre’s size for a better location? And would a smaller facility discourage big shows?

It seems doubtful even the most ambitious plan would deliver funding on the level of Edmonton’s. Saskatoon may have to abandon its longstanding, long-shot dream of an NHL team to build a new downtown arena.

Quebec City built a $400-million 18,000-plusseat arena that sits waiting for an NHL team.

Can comparatively tiny Saskatoon leverage enough money to build an NHL-sized facility or will the dreams of an NHL team and a downtown arena prove incompatible?