With new Flames arena, Calgary pays more to get more

Calgary Flames owners and the city aimed to dazzle with the unveiled design for the new Scotia Place arena.

There’s a wavy red “cauldron” design on the building’s upper level, the narrative “fire” atop the silver-white “ice” at ground level. Gathering spaces and plazas sit at nearly every edge. There’s a third-level outdoor bar and a food hall that’s open to the public before shows and throughout the year, making the arena a place that invites hanging out, whether it’s game day or not.

Let’s contrast this with the theme of the previous version of the arena. If it’s “fire and ice” in 2024, what was it in 2021?

There was no narrative to the old design, at least not one ever presented publicly. The story it told, essentially, was: EVENT CENTRE.

There’s another story that gets told in Calgary’s arena saga. It’s this: what a difference hundreds of millions of extra dollars can make to a project.

We are promised more now because Calgary and the Flames are spending more, but you don’t have to look far from this proposed site in Stampede Park for a hard lesson in what can happen when promises meet budgetary reality — like what council is grappling with on the Green Line project after putting away Scotia Place’s ceremonial sod-turning shovels.

The arena deal that Calgary Sports and Entertainment and city hall reached a few years ago offered a $550-million hockey and concert venue, and by the time inflation pushed the price tag beyond $630 million in late 2021, the deal died.

The new Scotia Place brings Calgary $926 million worth of arena, community rink, plaza and parkade on the same block. Except it’s actually a bigger block, to be constructed on a site that’s several acres larger because the Smith government paid to relocate Fifth Street E. to become 5A Street, among the $300 million of city infrastructure upgrades the province contributed before the last election to help secure a project deal.

It’s a bit of the “get what you pay for” truism, isn’t it? A $926 suit fits nicer than a $630 suit; think about a type of superior automobile, and all the swanky add-ons you can get if you boost your budget by 47 per cent.

The last few years of construction inflation has surely accounted for some of the sticker shock between the 2021 Son of Saddledome and the newer model, but more money allows for fancier entranceways, a more thematic facade design, a new rooftop bar and larger outdoor video screen.

Think back to 2009, and the public outcry when then-mayor Dave Bronconnier had the audacity to propose a $25-million pedestrian bridge downtown, and sole-sourced celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to design it.

A simpler bridge would have cost far less, of course. A simpler bridge, however, wouldn’t have become a ubiquitously photographed landmark that’s routinely used to promote this city and Alberta.

We’ll learn later this month how council sorts out another textbook example of “better things cost more” with the train route that will serve Scotia Place.

The Green Line LRT project was pitched nine years ago as a $4.5-billion project that would span 46 kilometres, from the hospital in the deep southeast to near the city’s northern edge. It’s currently publicized as 18 kilometres from Eau Claire to 130th Avenue S.E., for $5.5 billion, but council will go public next week with a new inflation-adjusted budget and/or scope.

It’s a grind for Mayor Jyoti Gondek and council, while the UCP government is swearing it won’t contribute a cent more to what the transportation minister brands “Nenshi’s nightmare,” making hay of the fact UCP’s new NDP rival was mayor when the project was proposed as providing more track at less cost.

Writing at LiveWire Calgary last week, Darren Krause examined how that 2015 estimate was a rough projection based on simple, bare-bones stations. There was no clarity on how to get across the Bow River, and tunneling the line downtown wasn’t budgeted.

A lesser train line may have cost less, but the last several years of inflation make some of the price-tag difference a wash. The city may well have to find more ways to scrimp and nip away at aspects of the Green Line it sold to communities along the route — beyond $400 million in savings already found — with a project approach called “value engineering.”

Edmonton’s new downtown library showcased the risks of what happens when dreams meet budgetary-compromise reality. The city had to scale back the number of windows initially proposed, and go with a more economical exterior cladding, and voila — the project that became nicknamed the BiblioTank.

Budgetary realities may come crashing into the vision for Scotia Place, too.

Inflation or construction complications could push the project closer to or beyond $1 billion. And while there’s agreement now to share overruns between the Flames organization and the city, either side may choose to trim ambition instead of letting the finances bloat.

Should they choose that route, it will mean a little bit less fizz and pop, perhaps less fire and ice and outdoor bar space. That’s the value proposition the engineers and planners will have to reckon with.