Over the past decade, the most common question I’ve personally received from Calgary Flames fans – whether in person, in our comments section, via social media or via e-mail – has been “What’s happening with the new arena?”
Starting on Thursday, a lot of stuff is about to happen with the new arena.
Heck, a lot of stuff has been happening behind the scenes, as a small army of people toiling for CAA ICON, HOK, Dialog and the city have been getting a lot of administrative dominoes in position that need to be dealt with before they can begin full-tilt construction.
So here’s a quick rundown of what’s happening in the near future.
The planning commission meets on Thursday
If you haven’t been following the arena saga, here’s where things are at with the permitting process:
- There were two land use re-designation requests submitted to close the portions of 5th Street and 13th Avenue that will be part of the event centre block, which will complete the consolidation of the entire block.
- There were two development permits submitted to allow for the excavation of the event centre block to facilitate the construction of the building’s foundation, and to allow for the installation of shoring walls (to hold the shape of the excavated area).
The road closure land use re-designation requests are on the agenda for Thursday afternoon’s meeting. The two development permits have already been approved by the city – my understanding is the excavation and shoring don’t require planning commission approval, just review and approval by city administration – and they’re currently “in advertising” to let neighbours know that the permits have been approved.
The event centre committee meets on Monday
The missing piece of the puzzle is the building design itself, which has to be reviewed and approved by the planning commission in order for a development permit to be approved. The good news is that the process has already started, albeit behind closed doors, with members of council, the event centre committee and the planning commission getting a chance to look at designs back in May. Our understanding of the planning commission portion, at least, is that the intention was to serve as an informal review, after which the design team would go off and deal with any issues that were flagged.
Reports indicate that, yes, we’ll officially see the arena designs this coming Monday, following the event centre committee meeting. We’ll also likely get more defined construction timelines, and perhaps even a name announcement.
A city spokesperson indicated that an event centre announcement is scheduled for Monday afternoon.
Sportsnet’s Eric Francis reported on social media that a sod-turning event will take place on Monday. We haven’t been able to confirm that, but the public announcement actually being a sod-turning event wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, as a lot of fairly “big” arena-related media events have happened fairly quickly. We’ll see what happens.
The planning commission meets (again) next Thursday
The planning commission typically meetings every two weeks, and this Thursday’s meeting is a regularly scheduled one. But there’s another planning commission meeting next Thursday which was an additional meeting added by request. An agenda should be available shortly, but the timing of when it’s occurring could mean that the arena design review is the reason for the meeting. (The last extra planning commission meeting that was added was to review some planning policy documents, though, so we can’t guarantee that the meeting will definitely be newsworthy.)
Update from July 19: The agenda for next Thursday’s meeting has been released, and there are no arena-related items on it. They’ll be discussing the redevelopment of the old Viscount Bennett school lands and the West Elbow Communities local area plan.
Our current expectations
Based on what we’re reading and hearing, here’s what we’re expecting from here on out:
- If the sod-turning/ground-breaking event isn’t next week, it’ll be soon. (If not this week, we imagine it happens in early September.)
- Assuming no hiccups with the design review, we would expect construction to begin on the excavation and shoring on the site in August or September, and on the main building itself sometime in early 2025. If they can get the excavation and shoring done before the ground freezes, that could save several weeks on the building’s timeline. Generally speaking, arena construction takes about two and a half years to complete.
- Again, assuming no big hiccups, the building should be ready in advance of the 2027-28 NHL season.
As always, we’ll have more on this story as it continues to develop.
