The worst-kept secret in Calgary is no longer a secret. The Calgary Municipal Land Corporation announced on Wednesday morning the design team for the new home of the Calgary Flames. HOK and Dialog will be the designers.

HOK has emerged as one of the two biggest arena and stadium design firms in the world over the past decade. Their sports work was originally done by an internal group that spun off to form Populous, but they got back in the game with their 2015 acquisition of 360 Architecture.

HOK/360 has had their fingerprints on a ton of buildings including MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Rogers Place in Edmonton, Stockton Arena, and the Sprint Center in Kansas City. Having been to MetLife and Rogers Place, they’ve done a pretty good job with it.

Dialog was part of the design team of the renowned Calgary Central Library, so you can probably expect something fairly cool to emerge from their collaboration with HOK.

Populous is designing the BMO Center expansion, so politically it might have been challenging to give them both big projects in the Stampede Park refresh. Similarly, HOK has a local office and Dialog is based in Calgary, so in addition to being heavy hitters the HOK bid also had some nice local appeal that likely helped.

Construction of the new arena begins next summer and is slated to open in the summer of 2024.