Prominent Calgary businessman, community leader and former football star John Forzani is in a Palm Springs hospital after suffering a stroke or heart attack.

On Thursday, the Eisenhower Medical Center confirmed Forzani is a patient in the facility’s intensive care unit. A spokesperson said Forzani’s condition is “undetermined.”

Forzani is a founder of The Forzani Group and ran the company for many years and is a minority owner in the Calgary Stampeders.

Tom Forzani confirmed his brother was on life support.

“He’s not well. They said that there is a possibility that he could somehow survive but his quality of life would be non-existent,” said Tom Forzani. “He was without oxygen for a period of time which caused severe injury to the brain.”

Tom said it was either a massive heart attack or a stroke.

“But right now it sounds like they’re leaning towards a stroke,” he said, adding the family is getting together in California.

Ken King, president and chief executive of the Calgary Flames, said he is “crushed and devastated” by the news.

“He’s a very dear and close friend,” said King, who has known Forzani since 1976.

“What he as a person has accomplished from a business perspective is very well known . . . This is a beautiful man. A beautiful person.”

Bob Sartor, president and chief executive of Big Rock Brewery, who formerly worked with Forzani at FGL, said Forzani is a wonderful guy.

“A guy who is generous to a fault,” said Sartor. “He was a big risk taker and really an innovator. He had a vision that was not only national but it ultimately became partly global with sales, of wholesaling, into the U.S. and other countries. He was a risk taker and he’s the kind of guy that builds a city, builds a province as a businessman.”

Prominent Calgary businessman Doug Mitchell, who has known Forzani for many years, said he is a great person and has been a great contributor to the community for a number of years.

“He’s given back a lot,” said Mitchell. “He’s been a very, very successful business person and he’s not hesitant to share his success with the overall community and its people.

“He had good business sense and I don’t care how smart you are, if you don’t have good business sense it’s very difficult. He had a combination of both.”

Forzani is in Calgary’s Business Hall of Fame.

In 2011, retail giant Canadian Tire acquired Calgary-based Forzani Group for $771 million.

FGL was conceived in 1974 when John Forzani, along with brothers Joe and Tom and friend Basil Bark, opened Forzani’s Locker-room on 17th Avenue S.W. in a 1,200-square-foot location.

When it sold to Canadian Tire, FGL operated more than 500 stores under the corporate and franchise banners, including Sport Chek, Sport Mart, Atmosphere, Nevada Bob’s Golf and Hockey Experts.

FGL went public in 1993 with revenues of more than $70 million a year.

At the end of its fourth quarter in January 2011, The Forzani Group had total annual revenue of more than $1.4 billion, and 534 stores.

“John Forzani is a business icon on the Canadian retailing scene and one of Calgary’s leading citizens,” said Michael Kehoe, an Alberta-based retail specialist with Fairfield Commercial Real Estate Inc., in Calgary. “His legacy runs deep in the Calgary business community from the legendary family enterprise Forzani’s running room to expanding the Forzani Group’s Sport Chek retail brand into Canada’s largest sporting goods retailer. The retail chains that John Forzani co-founded and led always took his strong, business-minded, community-oriented, socially-responsible and hard-driving persona.”