Sports mega-complex has little to offer, once the shine is removed.

CalgaryNEXT misses the mark

You’ve probably heard of CalgaryNEXT, the proposed $890 million mega sports and events complex proposed for the west end of downtown Calgary.

Recently, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was part of an aggressive sales pitch to Calgary community leaders, in which he threatened that Calgary must embrace the plan or “face the consequences”. He has even gone so far as to state that “the future stability, viability and continuity of the Calgary Flames, and perhaps the city of Calgary, rests on the achievement of CalgaryNEXT.”

Bettman’s tactic is a common one: invoke fear to steer us away from the conclusion that we can reach with only a small amount of common sense.

CalgaryNEXT, as currently proposed, is a dud.

I am going to get into the problems with the location, design, and overall idea of the project, but before that, it’s worth taking a quick look at the financials. The current proposal has the city fronting between $440 and $690 million, which might be recouped over a long process of ticket sales, but even that is not certain. There is also the cost of cleaning up the contamination from a creosote mine that operated in the area, not to mention the land cost. The city would own the building (got to take advantage of that tax-free status, after all) but it would be operated privately. All together, this adds up to a huge cost for the city, and a relatively small cost for the group of billionaires proposing the plan.

Someone much more economically savvy than me could probably do an entire article about the potential cost and benefit of the project, and I hope to see one. In any regard, if a project like this is going to happen, Calgary is going to inevitably end up shouldering a large amount of the cost.

If we’re going to make such a large investment in a cultural improvement to our city, let’s make sure we get the most out of it in terms of encouraging our city to grow from within.

Let’s put the capital costs aside and look at three reasons why this project is really not an improvement at all, from a planning perspective.

The Campus Effect

There is a planning tendency to take venues such as arenas, stadiums, and theaters, and group them together into a “cultural centre”. At first pass, this seems sensible: why not have all the same stuff in the same place? It seems efficient.

This thinking is widespread throughout ideas in city planning, and the problems with it manifest themselves in many areas, including our downtown. The idea violates one simple principle of cities, which is this: city streets and facilities are at their best when there is a mixture of people that use them, for a variety of reasons, at all times of day. This principle is so fundamental that there are books written entirely around the concept.

A mega project such as CalgaryNEXT does exactly the opposite. It gathers these sporting complexes into an isolated campus suited only for a very particular purpose. Much like a university campus, it is a large, sculpted area of land which serves only a very specific portion of the population at specific times of day. Unlike a university campus, it does not have the defense of being an educational facility and a generator of ideas.

Ideally, sporting venues should be centrally located in a city, but not in the same isolated complex. Toronto is an example of this, with Rogers Centre and the Air Canada Centre located withing walking distance of each other, but in distinctly different parts of the city. Ottawa is taking a step in this direction by relocating their arena from Kanata into the downtown, but keeping it separate from the football stadium.

Core Adjacent

While the first problem was with the consolidation of the sporting facilities, the second is with its location specifically. The new location is just as far “outside the core” as the Saddledome. At least the current location of the ‘Dome is tied to the stampede grounds and is close to the new East Village developments and other dense areas in Victoria Park. The new location on the west side of downtown offers less walkable access. It’s certainly debatable whether sporting complexes offer their surroundings any positive externalities at all, but if they do this area seems even worse suited for it than the areas around the Saddledome and McMahon Stadium. The Bow River and the CP tracks form a natural barrier around the area, discouraging any sort of positive spillover from the project.

There are some great examples of good centrally located arenas. Two that come to mind are Montreal’s Bell Centre, and New York’s Madison Square Garden. These are considered two of the best arenas in the NHL, at least in terms of location. They are right in the heart of the city, and have the potential to serve the surrounding areas with pre-or-post event spillover. They are also located right next to a metro line and in both these cases regional transport (Gare Lucien-L’Allier and Penn Station). This last point is so important, it gets its own section.

Poor Transit Location

Both McMahon Stadium and the Saddledome have C-Train “access”, though both of these require a several minute walk from the station to the stadium, and in both cases through vast parking lots. To me, this sends an interesting message: those who drive to events in these venues are more important than those who take transit. These venues push alcohol sales pretty aggressively, they should also be encouraging transit use (or at least alternative transport) aggressively.

McMahon Stadium, and even the Saddledome have an excuse: they were built before or right around the time that the LRT was constructed. The new proposal does not have that excuse.

The nearest LRT station for CalgaryNEXT would be the Sunalta station, on the West LRT line. It is no closer than Banff Trail is to McMahon, or Victoria Park/Stampede is to the Saddledome. As far as conveniently serving the city, this location is even worse, since the West/Northeast LRT line serves less people than the Northwest/South LRT – more people would have to transfer, less people will use it.

If Not There, Then Where?

First off, split up the venues. There is no real reason to have a fieldhouse, football stadium, and arena in the same place. In my mind, the best location for the arena would be right downtown, perhaps somewhere near Stephen Avenue. I understand that would be a great undertaking, maybe impractical given the existing buildings in downtown, but it would be a step in the right direction to making the core a destination on weekends and evenings. Maybe, if it’s not practical to do it in the best location, it’s not practical to do it at all. This is a big, expensive project with plenty of financial risk to the city.

I have no idea what “consequences” Bettman was referring to, but I doubt they were the ones I have discussed here. In this case, the old adage rings true:

Do it right, or not at all.