According to reports, the Calgary Flames could be just weeks away from announcing plans for a new arena, but Mayor Naheed Nenshi says any proposal comes with a pile of obstacles.
The Flames haven’t been hiding their intentions to build a new arena somewhere in the city.
The Saddledome is among the oldest arenas in the NHL, opening in 1983.
The capacity of the stadium is just under 20,000.
The Flames say they’ve been exploring lots of different options over the years, with the latest being a site in Calgary’s West Village.
Mayor Nenshi, who has been extremely reluctant in granting any concessions or taxpayer funding to the Flames owners about any type of redevelopment, says the newest proposal comes with obstacles.
“Land is also public funding, so we need to have a really good answer as to why that makes sense and, in particular, the West Village has an enormous amount of environment contamination and so any development plan would have to have enough property tax benefit to pay for that environmental cleanup.”
Some councillors say they are willing to look at the issue, but none have been completely in favour of public funds going towards an arena project.
Speculation for a new arena last popped up during a broadcast of Daily Planet in January of this year depicted a transforming roof concept created by an architectural firm called Populous.
In the concept, the Calgary Flames logo was on centre ice and gameplay footage could be seen on the stadium’s jumbotron.
Also adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Populous isn’t unknown in the arena construction game. They’ve had a hand in designing eight other NHL arenas.
Flames President and CEO Ken King said then that an announcement for a replacement for the Scotiabank Saddledome is still a long way off.
