deborah yedlin says YES
President and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce
At a time when there are myriad competing priorities, it’s fair to ask whether public money should be used to support the development of the Event Centre District (“the District”). The answer is yes—for a number of reasons.
The decision to invest in the project sends a strong signal to Calgarians, illustrating that we believe in our collective future. Equally important, it sends a similar message both to companies and to individuals looking to move to Calgary. Given the imperative for continued economic diversification, the talent base we’re looking to attract, and Calgary’s intention to become a magnet for international conventions and other events, having a modern and accessible event centre and surrounding District is table stakes; we compete with the world for business opportunities, capital and talent.
The Saddledome is currently one of the busiest sports facilities in North America, accommodating three professional teams in addition to hosting other events, including concerts and conventions, throughout the year. But the underlying infrastructure is profoundly challenged, in everything from the accessibility of the venue itself by individuals who are mobility challenged, to the ability to efficiently reconfigure the space for different events, provide food to ticket holders or adequately accommodate media covering sporting events.
And it’s more than an arena. This District will inspire new developments to complement the arena as well as the BMO Convention Centre. It will have a year-round retail and restaurant presence, bringing Calgarians to the area regardless of whether they’re attending an event, and ensuring its vibrancy 365 days a year. The financial support from the Alberta government to address the area’s inadequate transportation corridors will further improve the access provided by the LRT Green Line; work on this has already begun.
For too long the lands adjacent to the Saddledome and Stampede grounds have been fallow from a tax base perspective. The District will activate the area, significantly growing the City’s tax revenues, as more residential and commercial developments are built. These will also provide services expected by visiting conference delegates.
Finally, concerts today come with more complex equipment than was in use when the Saddledome was built in the 1980s. We know artists skip Alberta entirely because they can’t hold an event in both Edmonton and Calgary. Big concerts—witness the Taylor Swift effect, which is expected to boost the economy by $700-million when the Eras Tour comes to Vancouver and Toronto—substantially boost the local hospitality sector writ large. This is as much about Alberta as it is about Calgary.
Albertans now fly out of province to attend such shows, taking their leisure dollars with them. As we compete to attract capital, opportunities and talent, a new arena and Event Centre District are essential in today’s world.
peter oliver says no
Project Calgary volunteer and former president of the Beltline Neighbourhoods Association
Successive Calgary councils, and now the province, have thrown obscene public subsidies at increasingly one-sided arena deals that socialize the costs and privatize the profits for the Calgary Flames’s billionaire owners. This is neither necessary nor economically savvy.
Calgary already has the Saddledome, a beloved city landmark. Sure, it might not have as many corporate boxes and revenue streams as newer facilities, but it isn’t the public’s responsibility to supersize revenues or pay for new facilities for private businesses. Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle all built new arenas with 100 per cent private funds.
Boosters for a new arena claim the Saddledome is approaching its end of life. But previously undisclosed engineering reports obtained by the CBC in 2022 reveal that concerns about the roof are “superficial.” Much of the Saddledome’s mechanical and electrical systems are new, having been replaced after the 2013 flood. It’s scandalous that the City hasn’t produced a cost estimate to maintain the Saddledome for another 30+ years.
Another myth is the missed “economic opportunity” of big-name tours skipping Calgary due to challenges posed by the Saddledome’s design. But a 2023/2024 Project Calgary study of Edmonton’s “state of the art” arena and Calgary’s “aging” dome found that the ol’ saddle is actually hosting more events than its costly counterpart. In today’s touring world, big-ticket acts are ditching arenas for larger stadiums, Vegas residencies and now the high-tech Sphere, and thus the underlying business case for Calgary’s replacement arena has been nullified.
The process around Calgary’s arena deals was carefully crafted to obscure it from public scrutiny. That’s likely because subsidizing billionaires is never popular at the polls. In the 2017 municipal election, incumbent mayor Naheed Nenshi handily defeated Bill Smith, who campaigned for a more favourable deal for the Flames. In 2021 Jeff Davison finished a distant third for mayor on a platform that boasted his having spearheaded the first arena deal. Last year Danielle Smith’s election campaign gambled provincial funds on the new arena deal, only to be snubbed by Calgarians, who elected a majority of NDP MLAs.
The new deal is bad. In exchange for fronting 97 per cent of the capital cost, covering 100 per cent of the flood risk and over half of the cost overruns, the City is relinquishing all revenues. Yet according to a 2023 Forbes report, a new arena could boost the Flames’ revenues by $98-million per year if it performs anything like Edmonton’s Rogers Place. The cherry on top includes exclusive land development deals that can be exercised years into the future at 2019 valuations while citizens get hosed with property tax increases and a new ticket tax.
Publicly funding a new arena ultimately comes down to opportunity cost. Are there not higher-priority uses for $1.2-billion than affordable housing for billionaires…? Calgary should have greater ambitions.
deborah yedlin responds to peter oliver
When people are quick to criticize a city’s significant investment in infrastructure, like a new arena, I answer with a story dating back to 1987. In March of that year I was being interviewed by a vice-president for a financial analyst position at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in New York City. As I nervously sat in his office, he looked at me, looked at my resumé, and asked: “Edmonton? Where the hell is Edmonton?” My first thought was to reply it was a four-hour flight west of Toronto. But that wouldn’t really tell him anything.
Instead, I answered with two words: “Wayne Gretzky.” His response was immediate—and enthusiastic. “You’re from there?!” I’m sure this incredulity was a mixture of “How did Edmonton get such a great player?” as much as it was about how a young woman from a city that was far from being known as a financial centre came to be sitting in his office.
That was an important lesson for me at age 25. The Oilers, and more specifically Gretzky, had put Edmonton on the North American map. People talked about Edmonton when the team played against the New York Rangers at the storied Madison Square Garden. We were on the radar. An investment in infrastructure—in this case, Northlands Coliseum—was paying off.
Edmonton was more than a decade ahead of Calgary, with the Coliseum having opened in 1974 and establishing itself as a venue to host myriad events, from WHL and NHL hockey games to international figure-skating competitions and concerts Calgarians had to travel to Edmonton to see. Yes, it happened in the 1970s and 1980s too—not just today.
But the Coliseum, like the Saddledome today and other significant pieces of infrastructure around the world, reached its best-before date and needed replacing. Much like in Calgary, the issue was controversial in Edmonton—but the deal struck over Rogers Place was positive for the city at a time when the downtown core needed a significant lift, igniting the development of land in the area. This, in turn, boosted the local tax base. And for both cities, government had to come to the table to de-risk the private capital needed.
The Event Centre District represents another chapter in the evolution of Calgary as a world-class city.
With taxpayers having a stake in the project, Calgary’s new Event Centre—by design—will have to account for the public interest, not just the elements that will improve the Flames’s bottom line. Calgary is struggling with vibrancy and getting people to return to downtown—and has never unlocked the value of the prime real estate around the Stampede grounds. But public dollars will catalyze a new vision for our burgeoning city.
The Event Centre District, of which the new arena will be but one part, represents another chapter in the evolution of Calgary as a world-class city. While the Saddledome is an iconic and much-loved landmark, its layout, lack of accessibility and structural inability to host many events means Edmonton benefits from Calgary’s lost entertainment, tourism and hospitality opportunities. This ultimately shows up on the province’s bottom line. Think about the people unable to go to NHL games in Calgary or other events because of mobility issues and the associated challenges in navigating the Saddledome.
While some might say concerts don’t matter, because artists will opt for venues such as the Sphere in Las Vegas, the truth is the Sphere is a residency and rarely a one-night stand. Besides, Calgary’s new arena—like Rogers Place in Edmonton—will be adaptable to different artists and audience sizes, which isn’t the case today. And the sound at a concert at the Saddledome is notably inferior—nothing can fix that.
No one questions that there are competing demands for the dollars being allocated to the arena. Everyone faces the challenge of allocating resources for short-term and long-term benefit. When a company invests to grow its business, it’s a sign of confidence in the future. The same is true when governments allocate public dollars, in this case to the arena and Event Centre District. This is an investment in the future of Calgary, which has been buffeted by economic challenges since 2014. When our goal is to diversify the economy by attracting capital, talent and opportunity, a state-of-the-art facility capable of hosting multi-faceted events is part of the sales pitch. We need to be seen as looking forward, not hanging on to the past.
Calgary has always punched above its weight. The Event Centre District will be a perfect coda to the arts infrastructure renewal currently underway and in close proximity to what the Washington Post called “an architectural masterpiece”—Calgary’s Central Library. This is how we transform a city: step by step, building by building, project by project, making it ready for the next generation. Skating, if you will, to where the puck is definitely going.
peter oliver responds to deborah yedlin
While I agree with Deborah Yedlin that Calgary city council’s decision to subsidize a new arena for billionaires sends a message to the world, I disagree about what message it sends. To an outside observer, the message is clear that Calgary’s political leaders lack self-confidence in our city and were duped into believing that subsidizing a new arena would somehow help us attain “world-class” status. As a local citizen, I’d argue the secrecy and absence of public engagement on the decision sends the message that council knew the public wouldn’t support the deal but went ahead with it anyway.
The master plan for the “Culture and Entertainment District” (also known as the C&E District or Rivers District, but mistakenly referred to by some as the “Event Centre District”) was approved by city council in 2018. Led by the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC), it is an ambitious redevelopment plan for East Victoria Park and the Stampede grounds, and a follow-on to CMLC’s successful East Village redevelopment. The council-approved vision for the C&E District was to integrate into the existing urban fabric a vibrant, high-density, mixed-use, active, walkable, accessible community with arts and cultural spaces at its core. I was quoted in the plan’s executive summary and offered my praise at the time.
Unfortunately, the planned vision for an event centre with great public realm that integrated into the rest of the C&E District was tossed into the garbage when council removed CMLC from the event centre project in 2021 at the request of the Calgary Flames’s owners, whose primary objective for the new facility is inwardly focused on maximizing profits for the private operators.
Yedlin conflates the overall vision for the C&E District, which is worthy of the public’s support, with the one-sided deal to publicly fund a new arena within the district. It’s important to recognize that the district’s vision could still have been realized by extending the life of the Saddledome, or by requiring the Flames owners to pay their own way or share the revenues of the new facility proportionally to the public’s contribution.
Leaders were duped into believing that subsidizing an arena would help us attain “world-class” status.
Instead Calgarians learned in April 2024 that the City will divert $850-million in public funds to build the arena. Yedlin points out that a new arena may be more accessible for people with mobility challenges. But it will be less economically accessible for most Calgarians, with a 9.5 per cent ticket tax slapped on every admission. If accessibility were truly the goal, the $850-million should have been spent on the Green Line LRT. Great public transit is key to building a truly accessible city.
Yedlin also touts new tax revenues generated by redevelopment of lands within the C&E District. But as a function of the local Community Revitalization Levy, new taxes from the district will not flow into the City’s general revenues until after 2048—just in time for the Flames owners to start demanding another arena replacement. And arenas are not the catalyst for redevelopment that their boosters claim. To date only one new development, a hotel beside the convention centre, has been announced. Recently Edmonton city council, citing a lack of development interest, approved a five-year extension of permits for surface parking lots adjacent to Rogers Place, eight years after that arena opened.
Overlooked by Calgary City Council is the $100-million that will be wasted on another four-lane underpass, which will become entirely unnecessary if the plans to redevelop the existing swaths of surface parking are actually realized and thousands of public parking spaces that currently contribute to the area’s influx of vehicular traffic on event days are removed. The new underpass is also unneeded given the two LRT lines that will service the district.
Yedlin isn’t wrong to describe the lands adjacent to the Saddledome and Stampede grounds as “fallow.” However, a new arena that’s expected to host events at best just 200 days a year won’t add year-round vibrancy. The proposed Flames-managed restaurants at the arena, with capacities as large as 800 seats, will be challenged to draw more than a handful of bewildered tourists outside of an event. One need only visit Edmonton’s Ice District or Los Angeles’s L.A. Live to experience the true desolation of empty sidewalks and cavernous chain restaurants on days that don’t have events scheduled.
If the business case for subsidizing a billion-dollar arena is to attract throngs of “Swifties” or the next big-ticket tour, we have utterly failed to do our homework. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, cited by Yedlin, with its multiple shows at 50,000+ seat stadiums in Toronto and Vancouver, cares not for new 18,000-seat arenas in Edmonton or Calgary, no matter how “world-class” we may think they are.
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