Do you support the proposal for the new arena?

  • Yes

    Votes: 89 65.0%

  • No

    Votes: 39 28.5%

  • Maybe

    Votes: 9 6.6%
  • Total voters
    137
darwink said:
The past agreement was fine. The problem was the compromise building that came out of the design process.
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I thought there was a disagreement over how cost overruns would be shared. Did this not become apparent after the first round of estimating? I know the project went out for preliminary tender just before CSEC and the city parted ways.
 
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JonnyCanuck said:
I thought there was a disagreement over how cost overruns would be shared. Did this not become apparent after the first round of estimating? I know the project went out for preliminary tender just before CSEC and the city parted ways.
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The owners thought they'd be better at controlling overages due to their oil sands experience so a couple things happened simultaneously (in summer) in my mind: CMLC was dropped, the City contributed more money, the City was released from commitments to share further money. Then there were minor requirements added for the DP (fall), and CSEC treated that as the city reneging on the deal, which happened right near preliminary tender and CSEC used as a face saving step to pull the plug (winter).

In the end the problem is the interrelated issues with site, scope, and budget. The scope was too much for the site imo, which pushed the budget even more. The number of seats increased at the insistence of one of the parties, but we don't know which. Even the older inverted bowl had underground components under 5th St SE and parkade/loading dock entrances east of 5th. To constrain the project to the 2 blocks while adding the parking structure and a couple thousand seats was a recipe for failure.
 
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Another way to summarize would be that rising costs made it almost certain that the total price tag was going beyond the scope of the agreement, including the agreed upon contingency amounts. CSEC agreed to take on further cost overruns in exchange for removing CMLC from the project - letting CSEC focus on what they want while eliminating weak revenue generators like the practice/community rink. Then costs were even more than they could stomach so they found a good excuse to pull the plug while passing the buck.

A few issues overall:
1. Several significant costs were excluded/obfuscated to achieve a nice simple 50/50 infographic (land value, insurance, land options, demolition, etc.). The deal wasn't awful, but IMO it was too generous from the city, and they pissed away their best opportunity to extract a few final concessions when they...

2. ...rushed to vote before summer break. With a little more review and debate they also may have been able to identify and avoid pitfalls like the roads/sidewalks issue. And given the pace of the project to follow, it seems the urgency to get the vote done was false...almost as if they knew it wouldn't stand up well to scrutiny.
 
I paraphrase: "Adopt the recommendations from the report... Forward report to council as (confidential) urgent business."

Something is brewing, no news is good news I think in this case. My uneducated guess is with budget time approaching there are some timely things to look at before then.

Still wild that because there are other parties involved we won't get to look at anything to do with this until all the i's are dotted and t's crossed on an agreement. No way they go public without everything taken care of. Then we'll get some (maybe but probably not updated) renderings and boom there will be shovels in the ground. I don't see a design going back to the public for feedback, we had our opportunity for feedback.
 
Do you think that the new parties involved will change the design of what was proposed previously? Because man, the proposed event centre looks like a glorified Costco. I want it to look iconic for calgary and be a architectural destination.
 
My guess is the design is pretty much final. I doubt either party wants to dump more money into the project and waste more time redesigning the arena after essentially pausing the project for a year because of monetary disagreements right before the start of construction. I have to think both CSEC and the city are at this time hoping to have a new agreement in place before the development permit expires in November (I could be wrong on that date.)
 
I'll buy you a beer on opening night if the design from last summer is built. So many problems caused by path dependence, inflexibility, and making decisions which alone might not cost much but together compound.
 
Duck Lightning said:
My guess is the design is pretty much final. I doubt either party wants to dump more money into the project and waste more time redesigning the arena after essentially pausing the project for a year because of monetary disagreements right before the start of construction. I have to think both CSEC and the city are at this time hoping to have a new agreement in place before the development permit expires in November (I could be wrong on that date.)
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That's honesty so unfortunate man, I was just struck by hopium that the design could potentially change. Also, they also mentioned that they had other design proposals, but the one we saw was the one we were presented with.
 
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