Happy this is finally happening after almost a decade. Fans deserve a state-of-the-art arena as well as a new entertainment district. Calgary has sorely been missing a central location where there will be nightlife and entertainment; 17th Ave is very spread out and Stephen Ave is questionable at best.
In terms of city vs the Flames group contribution; in a perfect world I think everyone would have liked the Flames to have paid their own way into a new building. That all being said, there are a few factors that everyone seems to just gloss over because we can always make the big bad billionaire the boogeyman.
- The city was using a reserve fund for this upgrade. That fund is dedicated to capital investments; so this is not used to fund social programs, which are already budgeted (in theory).
- The city ran a mega surplus this year of a quarter billion dollars from taxing everyone to death. The City of Calgary's inefficiency to control their finances has been an issue since that jabroni Nenshi was around. In fact years ago when we debated this on the Flames board I posted the finances of the city; it makes no sense from an outsider perspective (like a run-of-the-mill citizen just trying to learn what money gets spent on). Millions of dollars (tens in some cases) spent on generic terminology with no further details provided. I.E: Efficiency Study: 900K. Like, what? What efficiency? What study?
- The Calgary Flames are a huge part of this city. Again, there's this social construct that we need good and bad guys. And people with a lot of money are bad guys. But... like; spend a few minutes at the Children's hospital in Calgary. Look at the Ronald McDonald House. Look at non-for-profit child services including special needs services (Pacekids Programs, etc). You'll see a lot of flaming C's all over. There's a lot of money being re-contributed into important things by the organization. I know there's tax reasons here too, but you can tax loop your profits other ways rather than investing in infrastructure and support for children.