When the puck drops for the 2027-28 National Hockey League season, the Flames will relocate a couple hundred metres north from the Scotiabank Saddledome to Scotia Place. And while we’re all hearing continuing hang-wringing over the progress of the Olympic facilities in Milan, Scotia Place continues to come together nicely.

We took a quick stroll around the block on Saturday after Flames morning skate and wanted to share a few street-level snapshots of how things are moving along.

Looking north from 14th Ave.

This photo looks at the south end of the building. To the left is Stampede Trail and one of the two main entrances of the new arena. To the right (and underground) is the community arena. Directly in front will be one of the plazas with public art, and the “cauldron” art installation – literally, it’s gonna have a flame that burns outside of the arena.

Looking at the (future) southwest entrance

If you take the C-Train to Stampede Park starting in 2027-28 and wander from the Victoria Park station past the BMO Centre to Scotia Place, this will be your main entrance view. You can really start to get a sense of how that’ll look, in terms of both the overall spacing of the entrance and the steel structure coming together.

As more and more upper-level steel starts going up, we’ll get a better sense of the rest of the front view – and they’ll be adding on additional steel for the two-level bar beside the entrance later on.

Looking east from Stampede Trail

If you want a sense of the “blink and you’ll miss it” progress they’re making, here’s a good view: they’ve already gotten about half-way around the arena bowl in setting up the initial steel. They started at the far south end of things, near the southeast access ramp to the site, and this shot shows steel working around the northwest corner of the site and starting to work around the north side.

A rough snapshot of progress

(Graphic design is obviously my passion.)

So here’s a quick rundown of how things stand heading into Christmas, more or less:

They’re placing gigantic beams over top of the loading dock to support the roof structure above it. Once the loading dock access ramp is ready to be used – presumably once the beams are all placed and that structure is done – then that ramp becomes the main entryway for the site.
Right now, while the loading dock is being worked on, the main site access is on the southeast side through a gap in the concrete (noted in red). Once the loading dock is done, they can finish pouring the last bits of concrete, allowing them to finish the last bits of underground work between the southeast corner of the event and mezzanine levels and the community rink.
The steel work is following the completed concrete around the site in a clockwise manner. Right now the “lower level” of steel (in green) has been set to just past the northwest corner. The “upper level” of steel (in blue) is working its way around from the southeast corner. Once the concrete is all done, the steel can continue around to where it started and they can complete the loop.

Check out our interview with the City of Calgary’s Bob Hunter, as he provided a ton of detail and context for what’s happened in 2025 and what’s going to unfold in 2026.

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