Do you support the proposal for the new arena?

  • Yes

    Votes: 102 67.5%

  • No

    Votes: 39 25.8%

  • Maybe

    Votes: 10 6.6%
  • Total voters
    151
konradiical said:
I really dont see the huge hate on the project. Like sure the arena is not beautiful, but it is not ugly either. Most arenas are mostly cookie cutter or try to blend in with their environement (especially with our budget). Like sure it is not unique in anyway, but I like the urban design aspect of having an entertainemnt district with bars, clubs, restaurants and plazas. Having residential nearby. The Saddledome besides being uniquly shaped is not amazing at all. It is surrounded by massive parking lots and 17th or Stephen Ave are not close enought to be considered apart of the environment. Literally any vibrancy dies the second you leave the arena. The new project at least from an urban design is trying to make it less car centric and create an area that people like to hangout regardless.

I agree they should,ve done a better job with the arena and probably like whole area in general, but it will be light years ahead of what the Saddledome and its surrounding area had to offer imo. This area will connect nicely to EV at least and create an area once considered a dead zone to be vibrant. The Saddledome always seemed to be kinda in the middle of nowhere unless it was Stampede. Maybe if we had a bigger budget and the Flames had a less cheap ownership group a better project would've been proposed but that is not the case. Maybe im in the minority, but I dont think many arenas around the NBA and NHL are anymore unique looking than this one. Im just glad the urban desgn is not complete garbage like the Saddledome was.

As for skyline, besides Scottsman Hill, idk where you can really see the Saddledome as a part of it. I wish we could keep it and give the dome another function, but it is what it is. Maybe we should add soem sort of ferris wheel like Seattle or London to add something unique to our skyline lmao.
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At the end of the day this new arena will do a much better job of intetrgrating with the ajacent blocks and streets, which is what I was most interested in. We could have had a more interesting overall design lke the arena in Quebec, but we'd be stuck with an arena that doesn't integrate well with the surroundings. I've been to a number of arena sin different cities, and TBH, I can't even remember what any of them look like, I only remember what it was like at the street level.For example, MTS in Winnipeg was decent, Canadian tire centre in Ottawa was a total fail. most other arenas I've been to or have driven past are not very good at the street level, this is one of the best street level ones I've seen.
 
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konradiical said:
I really dont see the huge hate on the project. Like sure the arena is not beautiful, but it is not ugly either. Most arenas are mostly cookie cutter or try to blend in with their environement (especially with our budget). Like sure it is not unique in anyway, but I like the urban design aspect of having an entertainemnt district with bars, clubs, restaurants and plazas. Having residential nearby. The Saddledome besides being uniquly shaped is not amazing at all. It is surrounded by massive parking lots and 17th or Stephen Ave are not close enought to be considered apart of the environment. Literally any vibrancy dies the second you leave the arena. The new project at least from an urban design is trying to make it less car centric and create an area that people like to hangout regardless.

I agree they should,ve done a better job with the arena and probably like whole area in general, but it will be light years ahead of what the Saddledome and its surrounding area had to offer imo. This area will connect nicely to EV at least and create an area once considered a dead zone to be vibrant. The Saddledome always seemed to be kinda in the middle of nowhere unless it was Stampede. Maybe if we had a bigger budget and the Flames had a less cheap ownership group a better project would've been proposed but that is not the case. Maybe im in the minority, but I dont think many arenas around the NBA and NHL are anymore unique looking than this one. Im just glad the urban desgn is not complete garbage like the Saddledome was.

As for skyline, besides Scottsman Hill, idk where you can really see the Saddledome as a part of it. I wish we could keep it and give the dome another function, but it is what it is. Maybe we should add soem sort of ferris wheel like Seattle or London to add something unique to our skyline lmao.
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Honestly, I like it too. I don't love it but for a building of this size with the budget you could do a lot worse. UBS Arena (https://www.espn.com/nhl/insider/st...esome-innovations-new-york-islanders-new-barn) cost $1.1 Billion and as you can see looks like Greenwich Farmer's park-et oops... "Market". It's well documented that arena's are not drivers of activity on non-event days, so I don't naively expect this one to be. If there is enough going on around the arena than there should be something to do on non-event centre days. But that's not up the CSEC, it's up to CMLC and the CoC to surround this arena (the new Corral) with more than the status quo of a game-day sports bar and team store. I'll also say this arena far exceeds Rogers Place in Edmonton which is what this is all about. Rogers Arena is bland, cutoff from its own plaza, has no street presence and even berried the Gretzky statue under a +15. Sure it has a "public" practice rink but no thanks for paying to park and play hockey. Plus the C+E already has Cowboy's casino so put a check in that box. If it's better than Edmonton's that's a win in my book.

I would like to see the inside of the new Corral, my fingers are crossed it isn't as cavernous as Rogers Place this looks like it could be fine with numerous small sections that will make it feel smaller. As Tim Leiweke is quoted saying in the linked article about UBS Arena in New York: "We don't have a huge upper bowl, so we don't have a huge ceiling. So the noise doesn't get lost in the roof, which is critical," said Leiweke.
CEC1.jpeg
 
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Here's a thought - chop the roof off the Dome and drop it onto the new Event Centre. Council considers it heritage preservation and public art, opening up more funding sources. We get all the functionality of a modern facility, but the iconic look of the Dome is preserved. Mostly joking, but part of me would love to see this. :p

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I think in a few years most of us will forget all the back-and-forth and missed opportunities on this to be better - we will have a shiny new arena a shiny new convention centre (2024/2025) plus a shiny new green line (2028 ish?) in the area. Maybe even another apartment tower or two (although hopefully not the Cidex monster one).

Frustration will transition to causal acceptance and maybe even excitement - It'll clearly be better from a fan experience than current. Lots of people will like that!

All that said, we regrettably didn't manage to break the rut that most publicly funded arena projects find themselves in. As mentioned previously, the real problem was upstream of all this recent debate on design - it's how sports agencies have a unique ability to acquire public subsidy without a equivalent public oversight in what is being delivered. We give the money, but don't have enough influence on design to mitigate the negative outcomes, let alone see a measurable return - beyond having a bigger, fancier place great for concerts and games that are few of us can pay $100+ to enter every once in a while.

Does anyone know if they are tearing down the old Flames parkade as part of this project? If not the amount of parking in the area actually increased once the Saddledome is torn down. With the Stampede and CSEC, we now have two publicly subsidized parking authorities adjacent to each other immune from tax incentives or market forces to redevelop their lands to better use. Inner city land use goals achieved!

I just hope enough of us are still around to fight this battle again in 30 or 40 years when we "need" to rebuild a new arena on the now 30 or 40 year old surface parking lot that replaced the Saddledome.
 
konradiical said:
I really dont see the huge hate on the project. Like sure the arena is not beautiful, but it is not ugly either. Most arenas are mostly cookie cutter or try to blend in with their environement (especially with our budget). Like sure it is not unique in anyway, but I like the urban design aspect of having an entertainemnt district with bars, clubs, restaurants and plazas. Having residential nearby. The Saddledome besides being uniquly shaped is not amazing at all. It is surrounded by massive parking lots and 17th or Stephen Ave are not close enought to be considered apart of the environment. Literally any vibrancy dies the second you leave the arena. The new project at least from an urban design is trying to make it less car centric and create an area that people like to hangout regardless.

I agree they should,ve done a better job with the arena and probably like whole area in general, but it will be light years ahead of what the Saddledome and its surrounding area had to offer imo. This area will connect nicely to EV at least and create an area once considered a dead zone to be vibrant. The Saddledome always seemed to be kinda in the middle of nowhere unless it was Stampede. Maybe if we had a bigger budget and the Flames had a less cheap ownership group a better project would've been proposed but that is not the case. Maybe im in the minority, but I dont think many arenas around the NBA and NHL are anymore unique looking than this one. Im just glad the urban desgn is not complete garbage like the Saddledome was.

As for skyline, besides Scottsman Hill, idk where you can really see the Saddledome as a part of it. I wish we could keep it and give the dome another function, but it is what it is. Maybe we should add soem sort of ferris wheel like Seattle or London to add something unique to our skyline lmao.
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For me it boils down to three things.... if this was an arena being built with private funds I would consider it a win. But it's not. There are several hundred million dollars of public funds being used so in my mind there needs to be an overwhelming public good that those funds deliver. This design is a yawn and I would say the basic level of street presence this building delivers is what I would expect from any modern arena so saying that was the public good delivered is disingenuous.

#2: as many people have pointed out, the main reason this design was limited was due to the big ass parkade the Flames felt was absolutely necessary. I disagree so I wonder what incredible building we could have had if the City of Calgary had told CSEC to go pound sand about the parkade.

#3: I had faith CMLC was working to deliver a project that would have deliver the best benefits to Calgarians. The fact CSEC wanted CMLC gone when the going got tough makes me suspicious about the whole project being tilted to favour CSEC instead of the public given a set budget.
 
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The depressing thing is that the parkade isn't even really big-ass. It's big enough to be the primary influence on the architecture, and big enough to wall off a block, but there are only 190 stalls. (Plus 44 for players and I assume other staff in the below-ground level -- I believe the ). About one stall for every 100 seats; I assume entirely for the use of the people in the 48 suites.

As much as I am a transit advocate, I accept that even a site which will be within 400m walk of two different LRT lines will have some people drive. 15% of the region's population is outside the city, and both sports and concerts draw from further than that. Some people have mobility problems, there are plenty of suburban areas that are not well served by transit these days, particularly after a concert gets out at midnight. Even if only 25% of the attendees drive, and they average three to a car, that's still 1,500 cars. If adding a parkade dominated the design but meant that this arena would be an urban arena that does not need to be surrounded by oceans of parking, then I'd grudgingly accept it. But it doesn't; it'll handle a low single digit percent of the cars, and 9X% will be parked elsewhere.

It's appalling that hundreds of millions of public dollars are being wasted on a compromised design so that fewer than two hundred millionaires don't have to cross the street about once a week.
 
I was originally disappointed with the design, but the more time’s gone on the less I’m disappointed. When all is said and done, it’s a sports arena and its prime purpose is a building where hockey games will be played.
If it does a good job for the people using it on the inside and does a decent job interfacing the public realm it’ll be a success.
 
Beltline_B said:
I was originally disappointed with the design, but the more time’s gone on the less I’m disappointed. When all is said and done, it’s a sports arena and its prime purpose is a building where hockey games will be played.
If it does a good job for the people using it on the inside and does a decent job interfacing the public realm it’ll be a success.
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I'm in the same camp. I'm more excited about seeing the area around the arena getting developed, and seeing Olympic Way turned into a decently developed street and corridor that connects up nicely to EV. This could be the catalyst to take the whole east side of the core (EV and Vic Park) up another level.
 
Would be better if we could get a local company for the naming rights…

Benevity Corral
Attabotics Centrum
Shaw Corral
Agrium Centrum
WestJet Corral

tons of options…
 
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