A city committee says it has found funding and identified a plan for a new NHL arena and will present a draft proposal to council next week.
Calgary’s Event Centre Assessment Committee spent the better part of Wednesday discussing a term sheet for the negotiation of a $600M facility.
Ward 6 Councillor Jeff Davison confirmed that the committee has identified a source for funding, which will not affect the property tax rate.
“One of the things that we set out for, in terms of the event centre, was the idea of public dollar for public benefit and so from the get-go we said we can’t use property tax increases to pay for what we want. At the end of the day, we achieved that, you know, we’re really happy with the financial structure that we have and we do believe that, within the terms that we’ve set, there will be significant public benefit from public dollars,” he said.
He says the Flames asked for two things; a vision for what an arena could look like and for a proposal.
“So what you saw yesterday was committee agreeing on what that proposal should look like, in term sheet format, and that’s what we’re prepared to bring forward to council,” said Davison.
Davison was unable to elaborate on where the money will come from but did say that a number of private and public partners are on board.
The CMLC is developing the Rivers District where the proposed arena would be built and that project includes a massive expansion of the BMO Centre, which will allow the city to attract larger conventions.
“What we’ll also be bringing to council on Monday is a financial strategy that looks at the event centre itself but also looks at the other four, mega projects that we’re trying to achieve and how we can get there over time,” he said. “There’s multiple funding sources we’re looking at, in terms of how we would fund the events centre, which is going to be different than how we might fund the BMO Centre. When you look at it though, out of all of these things, it’s really about attracting a couple of things; one is what capital do we have internally available to us, what partner capital can we bring to the table from the private sector and then looking at the other orders of government for what kind of funding there will be out there, so that’s across the four, mega projects.”
Davison says there is still a lot of work to be done and that the earliest construction could begin would be late 2020 or early 2021.
“We’ve had a number of high-level discussions with the Calgary Flames and as I’ve said in the past, they’ve been positive, they’ve been proactive and they’ve been respectful of each other’s position,” he said. “Now it’s time to put a deal together and get moving.”
A draft proposal for a new arena will be presented to council on Monday.
Davison says if council approves the proposal the next step would be to finalize the term sheet and then move it forward to the Calgary Flames.
A town hall is being hosted by Ward 11 Councillor Jeromy Farkas on Thursday evening at the Acadia Rec Centre from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. to ask area residents if they want a new arena.
For more information on the event, click HERE.
