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No one ever considers that the lie reflects badly on the small handful of companies that make arenas and stadiums

Something of the sort certainly applies to Rogers Place. The Oilers and the city are consciously completing their swindle of the taxpayer by emphasizing the construction as an engineering achievement, letting the actual building create a narrative. It is visible from many or most of the tall buildings in Edmonton. It is a little further along every day. It gives us something to chat with strangers about, when we are not talking about Connor McDavid. You are aware, looking at its skeleton, that you will be able to tell people one day that you were here at this time.

Needless to say, in your own life, you can starve chasing this sort of “hedonic benefit” with real dollars. And if Edmontonians weren’t so desperate to have something do what it says on the tin, they might feel some regret about the Oilers playing their last season in the old Coliseum, hockey’s most significant surviving piece of built heritage.

Which raises the strangest, least discussed point of all about government subsidies for hockey arenas: how soon they become obsolete. Calgary’s Saddledome, thought dazzling and architecturally fashion-forward when built, has become an onerous eyesore at age 32. Rogers Place is elbowing aside an arena born in 1974. Should Hollywood actresses have longer working lives than concrete megastructures?

The Greek theatre at Epidaurus seats 14,000 people; after 2,300 years it still accommodates drama. The question is really why, with modern materials and know-how, we cannot build hockey arenas to serve half a lifetime. We all know that this is a lie told by salesmen.