Calgary Flames President and CEO Ken King says crews are making huge progress and that he expects the Scotiabank Saddledome will be ready in time for preseason play in September.

King told CTV Morning Live that crews have done unbelievable work restoring the facility and that at the half way point he is optimistic the building will be ready for the fall.

“We made a call yesterday that, based on our best information, we think we can be back in business by September 1st,” said King.

The 30-year-old building was hit hard by the floods at the end of June and water destroyed most of the mechanical and electrical infrastructure.

King says he believes the 19,000 seat arena will be fully operational when fans arrive for the preseason games in the fall.

“From a fans standpoint, we believe that it will be. I mean there are no guarantees in life, but the fact is, shelving, warehousing and some of those things, anything that we can subordinate a bit in order to get the primary work done is what will be done, but from a public’s standpoint it would be virtually impossible for them not to see a fully functional building,” said King.

He says there will still be a lot of work going on behind the scenes once the facility is reopened and that they do have a backup plan to help keep things running smoothly.

“We’ve got an ice plant that we’ve brought in and even a portable kitchen and a portable production facility if we need it from a video standpoint," said King "We hope that they’re redundant, that they’re backups, and that everything that we have ordered and is under delivery and being prepared for installation will function as normal but you can appreciate the order of magnitude, the number of things that have to fall into place, so we thought it prudent to put some backup systems in place.”

King says the players have not been affected and will attend training camp as per usual.

“Our training camp is scheduled for Winsport, which is not unusual,” said King. “We have taken our training camp out before. Obviously when we were making the arrangements, without complete knowledge, it simply was prudent to look at an alternative and we did. We’re happy to be there. We had our development camp there a couple of weeks ago. We love Winsport so that’s where our training camp will be this year.”

The Flames are scheduled to play four preseason games in the Dome in September and the home opener against the Canucks is set for October 6, 2013.