Ken King; Flames Ownership no longer pursuing new arena in Calgary

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PanthersHockey1

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Mar 11, 2010
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It really is bad timing for the Flames new arena needs.

10 Years ago when the price of an oil barrel was $100+ and Petrol companies could not expand fast enough, people could not move to Alberta fast enough and developers could not build fast enough, the City would have easily approved a new arena in my opinion.

The Flames and the Calgary economy are dependent on oil. Until the price goes back up (which may be years) the City is in a hunker down mode.
 

SunDancer

Registered User
Jan 4, 2015
506
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on the Range
The problem is, if the exit strategy is to hold out in the Saddledome until they start running a loss and then dump the team overnight a la QC, who is going to be that local buyer willing to pick up a team in the red when the city at large is trending the way it is? There are multiple levels of government hellbent on turning us into the next Rust Belt - at least one of which seems likely to be locked into power for the next decade or so - and companies are finding it easier to simply pack up and go elsewhere rather than deal with the stacked layers of red tape. The only concrete alternative to keep the city's longterm economic prospects afloat seems to lie in hoping and praying Amazon decides against all logistical common sense and picks Calgary for HQ2.

I see the prospects of selling to a local buyer getting worse with time, not better. I was prepared to call their bluff when the expansion/alignment situation was working against it but Houston opening up as a second American option changes a lot of things.
I get that these are not the best of times for the city but still ... the Flames have an operating income that's in the top half of the league if not the top third. Calgary is the 4th largest market in Canada, with the 2nd highest household income and the 2nd largest financial centre behind Toronto. If the NHL is unable (unwilling?) to make it work in Calgary than I don't know what to say.
 

CorbeauNoir

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Apr 13, 2010
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I get that these are not the best of times for the city but still ... the Flames have an operating income that's in the top half of the league if not the top third. Calgary is the 4th largest market in Canada, with the 2nd highest household income and the 2nd largest financial centre behind Toronto. If the NHL is unable (unwilling?) to make it work in Calgary than I don't know what to say.

How long is it going to stay that way if the necessary corporate support to make a major league team viable is eroding from under our proverbial feet to the complete apathy (or open shandenfreunde) of the eastern half of the country? The city is bleeding work and nothing realistic is coming forward to take up the slack. A TV deal can only artificially prop things up for so long.

I'm not saying this is some kind of imminent they're-leaving-next-offseason cataclysm or whatever, but I've always seen it as something of a minor miracle that Alberta has been able to prop up two NHL teams for as long as it has. Higher levels of government have made it very much their interest in phasing out the sole reason Alberta has been able to do so and the Flames are now sitting as the odd man out with multiple paths now open for them to leave. Frankly I'm not sure even getting a new arena built will keep them safe at this point anyway, the Oilers beat them to the punch.

The Flames and the Calgary economy are dependent on oil. Until the price goes back up (which may be years) the City is in a hunker down mode.

The price going up isn't even going to matter if we're constantly getting cockblocked with establishing modernized delivery methods. No oil company on earth is going to want to gamble on the PR disaster of using aging pipeline infrastructure and we can't get anything new and more reliable built in any direction we try to go. If you can't get a product to market what use is the product?

The downturn should have been used as an opportunity to replace infastructure and put Alberta in an even better position once prices rebounded. Instead we're stuck far behind and ill-prepared for any kind of recovery with increased layers of taxation making corporate investment even less palatable for investors. And the sad thing is that it isn't going to do jack to actually stop the industry like these rabid protesters believe it will - all that's going to happen is that money that could have been directed to us is now going to go to financially benefit bastions of human liberty like Nigeria or the Arabian states instead.
 
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Saskatoon

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Aug 24, 2006
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How long is it going to stay that way if the necessary corporate support to make a major league team viable is eroding from under our proverbial feet to the complete apathy (or open shandenfreunde) of the eastern half of the country? The city is bleeding work and nothing realistic is coming forward to take up the slack. A TV deal can only artificially prop things up for so long.

I'm not saying this is some kind of imminent they're-leaving-next-offseason cataclysm or whatever, but I've always seen it as something of a minor miracle that Alberta has been able to prop up two NHL teams for as long as it has. Higher levels of government have made it very much their interest in phasing out the sole reason Alberta has been able to do so and the Flames are now sitting as the odd man out with multiple paths now open for them to leave. Frankly I'm not sure even getting a new arena built will keep them safe at this point anyway, the Oilers beat them to the punch.



The price going up isn't even going to matter if we're constantly getting cockblocked with establishing modernized delivery methods. No oil company on earth is going to want to gamble on the PR disaster of using aging pipeline infrastructure and we can't get anything new and more reliable built in any direction we try to go. If you can't get a product to market what use is the product?

The downturn should have been used as an opportunity to replace infastructure and put Alberta in an even better position once prices rebounded. Instead we're stuck far behind and ill-prepared for any kind of recovery with increased layers of taxation making corporate investment even less palatable for investors. And the sad thing is that it isn't going to do jack to actually stop the industry like these rabid protesters believe it will - all that's going to happen is that money that could have been directed to us is now going to go to financially benefit bastions of human liberty like Nigeria or the Arabian states instead.

This is a little bit over dramatic in my opinion. Lots of signs showing that while growth will be slow the recession is over in Alberta -> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-recession-over-atb-jobs-economy-oil-gas-1.4269136

Alberta does seem to be getting screwed with getting new ways to get their product to market but the province isn't just laying over and dying in response.
 

CorbeauNoir

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Apr 13, 2010
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Alberta is bouncing off of rock-bottom. It makes for nice-sounding short-term recovery percentages but by your article's own admission it'll stagnate before too long. The retail numbers cited as evidence also conveniently neglect to mention a coincidental explosion of dollar stores in the retail market - far more people are becoming far more reliant on a bottom-of-the-barrel tier of retail yet the article spins it as a sign of recovery.
 

CorbeauNoir

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Apr 13, 2010
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Calgary eyes multicity bid for Olympics that could include Edmonton and Whistler

This tells me a couple of things:

A) Don't hold your breath on the Olympics being some kind of saviour on the arena (slash football stadium) situation. What's the point if you can put your opening/closing ceremonies in Commonwealth and your marquee hockey games in Rogers Arena?
B) What kind of long-term state is the city in where they even need to contemplate such an unprecedented sprawling type of bid to make even the "budget" appeal being touted for a Calgary-hosted olympics feasible? This isn't a move that screams "we're confident in the economic health of the city going into the next decade". I've said it before, but this back and forth about the arena isn't some isolated dispute, it's a symptom of much more troubling issues with the direction Calgary at large is headed.
 
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Mightygoose

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Nov 5, 2012
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Calgary eyes multicity bid for Olympics that could include Edmonton and Whistler

This tells me a couple of things:

A) Don't hold your breath on the Olympics being some kind of saviour on the arena (slash football stadium) situation. What's the point if you can put your opening/closing ceremonies in Commonwealth and your marquee hockey games in Rogers Arena?
B) What kind of long-term state is the city in where they even need to contemplate such an unprecedented sprawling type of bid to make even the "budget" appeal being touted for a Calgary-hosted olympics feasible? This isn't a move that screams "we're confident in the economic health of the city going into the next decade". I've said it before, but this back and forth about the arena isn't some isolated dispute, it's a symptom of much more troubling issues with the direction Calgary at large is headed.

It looks to me branch to get provincial funding by putting events in Edmonton and even Federal if they're going to look at Whistler.

With the extra travel and security costs will this even off set anything?

Also, the 4.6 billion estimate doesn't include a new arena in Calgary so there will be no savings using Rogers Arena. It will cost everyone more with the larger footprint.
 

CorbeauNoir

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Apr 13, 2010
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The Olympics would be getting provincial/federal funding regardless. Proposing something like this tells me the city doesn't have the economic wherewithal to hold up its end of the funding, even after all the boasting that our existing Olympic infrastructure would make this a "cheap" hosting option.
 
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powerstuck

Nordiques Hopes Lies
Jan 13, 2012
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The Olympics would be getting provincial/federal funding regardless. Proposing something like this tells me the city doesn't have the economic wherewithal to hold up its end of the funding, even after all the boasting that our existing Olympic infrastructure would make this a "cheap" hosting option.

Let's just completely ignore that in recent years, Olympic games have had multi-location (city) events and even other major world competitions (World Cup of Soccer, Euro), did the same.
 

CorbeauNoir

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Apr 13, 2010
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Let's just completely ignore that in recent years, Olympic games have had multi-location (city) events and even other major world competitions (World Cup of Soccer, Euro), did the same.

A) Who cares what FIFA or UEFA does? They're completely unrelated entities who unlike the IOC have had the precedent from their very inception of hosting their events at a national scale. The logistics of infastructure needed for a single-sport stadium-scale event are different from those of a multi-sport event with a wide variety of capacities.

B) There is in fact zero precedent for an Olympics being spread out to the extent being proposed even if it was in two locations, let alone three. This isn't the same level as having your alpine events in a small town a short drive away from the hub city because of the necessities of geography. Moving what is essentially half the events into a completely different province in a completely different time zone on a completely different mountain range - and then splitting whatever events are left with another major city several hours drive away - defeats the entire purpose of a host city. Calgary isn't even going to be hosting a majority of the events by this point. Consider that the Olympic bid coming out of Switzerland, a country that could fit entirely within southern Alberta, has been essentially killed out of the gate because proposed venues would be sprawled out too far - and "Calgary" (even calling it a 'Calgary' hosting bid is innacurate at this point) is now proposing a scheme involving exponentially longer distances. It makes no sense.

C) Let's say for the sake of argument the IOC goes against everything it's done in the past century and greenlights this thing - maybe they'll get forced into it because we're the only ones left who are stupid enough to still bid, who knows? Why not propose it that way from the start? The entire appeal of this bid was supposed to be that Calgary has the existing infrastructure and alpine venues to host on the cheap. Now overnight they're suddenly proposing this monstrosity. If anything it unnecessarily balloons the costs as a whole by dragging another province's budget into the mix and requiring security to juggle between three venues sprawled across western Canada when they could have been concentrated on one and a half within an hour's drive of each other. So how much shit is Calgary in economically that it now finds itself compelled to believe it's "cheap" Olympics is going to be three times too expensive to stomach?

The precedent or lack thereof ultimately isn't the point, the fact it's even being considered at all this late in the game is extremely troubling. It doesn't speak to the kind of economic confidence that would, say, compel a professional team to not cut loose and sell off to bigger pockets down south if checkbooks start getting opened. Especially when this type of bid openly discourages the need to build a new arena.
 
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viper0220

Registered User
Oct 10, 2008
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If and when we get our new arena in Calgary the Flames are looking at something unique .... ROSSETTI’s Inverted Bowl: The Future of Arena Design?

That is very nice, if the Flames do get a new arena, really hope it looks something like the new arena in Milwaukee, that arena looks nice from the outside.

160316-Arena-Rendering-04.jpg



 
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DowntownBooster

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Jun 21, 2011
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That is very nice, if the Flames do get a new arena, really hope it looks something like the new arena in Milwaukee, that arena looks nice from the outside.

160316-Arena-Rendering-04.jpg





Who is paying for the new arena in Milwaukee? Is it the Bucks organization, the taxpayers of Milwaukee or a combination of the two?

:jets
 

Oilers Propagandist

Relax junior, it’s just a post.
Aug 27, 2016
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Edmonton, AB
I get that these are not the best of times for the city but still ... the Flames have an operating income that's in the top half of the league if not the top third. Calgary is the 4th largest market in Canada, with the 2nd highest household income and the 2nd largest financial centre behind Toronto. If the NHL is unable (unwilling?) to make it work in Calgary than I don't know what to say.
It's okay though, when the flames leave the Oilers will get a huge piece of the pie in Alberta, there isn't much choice. If they potentially move to Houston, it has potential to be larger than anything Calgary would ever be competing with Edmonton currently. That's 1 more humongous market as Oilers would be taking a lot of the Alberta pie and 1 potential one with Houston. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone and I think the league will be better off like that.
 

AdmiralsFan24

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Mar 22, 2011
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Who is paying for the new arena in Milwaukee? Is it the Bucks organization, the taxpayers of Milwaukee or a combination of the two?

:jets

Former owner - $100 million
Current owners - $150 million
City - $47 million ($12 million for plaza, $35 million for parking garage in a created TIF)
State - $80 million
County - $55 million
Wisconsin Center District - $93 million ($2 ticket surcharge and existing tax on hotel rooms, rental cars and food and beverage collected in the city)
 

muddywaters

GO FLAMES GO
Jul 12, 2006
694
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Heaven forbid , let's hope this doesn't happen ..... I believe something will be worked out , I can't see the premier city in this province not having an NHL hockey team ....
 

muddywaters

GO FLAMES GO
Jul 12, 2006
694
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Cedarbrae
Heaven forbid the Flames leave Calgary .... I still believe we see something worked out here .... I have heard a rumor that the Flames are looking at the Tsuu T'ina Nation by the Casino which butts right up against the city in the Southwest and would be right off the new ring road currently being built ... it is in a beautiful spot and would be assessable by car but no LRT ... I would prefer it be downtown but this location would actually be not that bad ... it would screw over the city and Stampede with their plans for an arena in the east village but with the way Nenshi is handling this it would be better than no new arena at all in my opinion .... as a season ticket holder it would actually be a lot closer for myself to get to than where the Saddledome is right now ... people in the Northwest will be able to use the ring road and I don't think it would be that much farther than our current situation , the deep Southeast would also be not that bad to get to , the Northeast would be definitely farther ...
 

Cacciaguida

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Jan 11, 2010
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Ottawa
It's okay though, when the flames leave the Oilers will get a huge piece of the pie in Alberta, there isn't much choice. If they potentially move to Houston, it has potential to be larger than anything Calgary would ever be competing with Edmonton currently. That's 1 more humongous market as Oilers would be taking a lot of the Alberta pie and 1 potential one with Houston. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone and I think the league will be better off like that.

For an Oilers Propagandist you sure make me wish the Oilers moved instead of the Flames.
 

Mike Jones

Registered User
Apr 12, 2007
12,505
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Calgary
Heaven forbid the Flames leave Calgary .... I still believe we see something worked out here .... I have heard a rumor that the Flames are looking at the Tsuu T'ina Nation by the Casino which butts right up against the city in the Southwest and would be right off the new ring road currently being built ... it is in a beautiful spot and would be assessable by car but no LRT ... I would prefer it be downtown but this location would actually be not that bad ... it would screw over the city and Stampede with their plans for an arena in the east village but with the way Nenshi is handling this it would be better than no new arena at all in my opinion .... as a season ticket holder it would actually be a lot closer for myself to get to than where the Saddledome is right now ... people in the Northwest will be able to use the ring road and I don't think it would be that much farther than our current situation , the deep Southeast would also be not that bad to get to , the Northeast would be definitely farther ...
I would have no problem with the move to the southwest for a new arena. As long as the Flames pay for everything they can build whatever they want wherever they want.
 
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CokenoPepsi

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Oct 28, 2016
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If the city of Calgary cannot host the Olympics without having to get two other cities involved they should just stop.

If Canada really wants to host another Olympic games they should really just go back to Vancouver.
 
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Oilers Propagandist

Relax junior, it’s just a post.
Aug 27, 2016
8,064
5,995
Edmonton, AB
For an Oilers Propagandist you sure make me wish the Oilers moved instead of the Flames.
Won't happen for another 34 years guaranteed. Flames are behind the 8 ball. Facts make your wish on existent so who really cares about it. Flames are on the back burner and have been in Alberta from the get go. Oilers are albertas team and will be in all of our lifetimes. #BringBacktheAlbertaOilers
 
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