Friends, we’re in the off-season and the focus for the Calgary Flames – on and off the ice – is the future.

Off the ice, literally up the road, is the 10 acre site of Scotia Place. In 2027, the Flames will be moving a block north of the Scotiabank Saddledome to their new arena. But the building is still under construction, and we’re following along with the progress every few weeks as the building works towards completion.

Here’s how things looked as of Victoria Day, the third Monday in May.

This is the view from the corner of Stampede Trail and 14th Avenue SE. For those unfamiliar: this is the front door of the building, so this is what you’ll see if you’re walking to a game after taking the C-Train to the Victoria Park LRT station and walk in past the BMO Centre.

This view has been pretty consistent for awhile – they made progress on this corner first and have been moving clockwise since then – but we’ll point out one thing: they’re starting to install the exterior panelling on the right side of the image. They’ve had the green building envelope panels up for awhile, but just recently has the brown and grey/white stuff been starting to appear.

If you look to the left, along the Stampede Trail side, there’s a bit more decking on the top of the restaurant and team store frame structures.

This is the view from the corner of Stampede Trail and 12th Avenue SE. The prominent metal structure in the middle is the canopy entrance for the team store. To the right, you can see the steel structures and decking for the team store and restaurants. On the left, below the main arena bowl structure there’s the framing and decking for the food hall, another restaurant and the northwest entrance.

(This will be the one of entrances for those entering from the Green Line LRT station to the north or for those walking south from downtown.)

We didn’t include this view earlier in May, from 12th Avenue SE looking south, but this is a clearer view of the structural steel framing for (from left to right) the northeast entrance, the Stephenson Grocery building, the food hall, and a restaurant. The grocery building will be integrated on the left side of that gap in the steel in the middle of the photo.

This is the view from the corner of 5A Street and 12th Avenue SE. This is the biggest change from the last update: the upper-level steel framing has moved more than halfway down the block, and there’s a bit more decking added along each of the levels of steel that have been installed.

The biggest thing left to do from this view is, well, the parkade. Much of the area to the left of the photo is space that will be taken up by the parkade structure. The concrete structure on the lower left is the entrance to the loading dock.

This is the view from 5A Street and 14th Avenue SE. Here you can get a sense of (a) just how much progress they’ve made since early May and (b) what’s left to do. In short: they’re almost done putting up the steel for the main bowl structure. It doesn’t look like they’ve installed any additional roof steel since our last check-in, though, but that tends to happen in bunches, since it involves moving a big crane (and using that big crane to install gigantic steel beams).

Here’s a slightly different view from higher up… which provides a bit of a better view of what’s left to do (and what to expect).

The big hole in the lower right is the community arena, which will be underground, so presumably that’ll be enclosed – similar to how they enclosed the loading dock with steel framing and then built above it at ground level. The structure for the community rink entrance and the parkade are still to come, too.

We’ll see how things look later on as we progress into June.