This coming Thursday, the Calgary Planning Commission meets for its regularly scheduled biweekly meeting. This week’s agenda has something Calgary Flames fans are likely very excited for: the review of the development permit application for Scotia Place, the team’s new arena.

If you’re just joining us, there have been a few administrative hurdles to clear before Scotia Place can be built – and that’s in addition to the years (and years) of protracted, eventful negotiations on the funding package. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s gone down so far, and what’s left.

Three parts of the approval process have already been dealt with:

Because of the scope of the arena project – and presumably the participation of the city as a partner in it – they were able to split out the excavation and shoring pieces of the approvals process and do them first, which allowed time for the building design to go through the review process. (Most projects have these approvals bundled together, which can delay the start of construction on contentious or complicated projects.) As a result, we’ve seen construction occurring on the Scotia Place site since September while the final revisions were made on the building plans. (A lot of work has been done behind the scenes by city admin and the design team over the past year on this stuff.)

Well, great news: it certainly sounds like revisions are done.

On Thursday, the planning commission will review item 7.1.1 on their agenda: the building plans and final approvals for Scotia Place. City administration has recommended that the planning commission approve the development permit, subject to 45 conditions.

If you’re having flashbacks to the November 2021 planning commission review that saw the first incarnation of the new arena get bogged down in 76 conditions of approval, we wouldn’t worry too much about it. The 2021 conditions weren’t massive, but most of them involved quite a bit of additional revisions before construction began – and since there were seventy-six of them, it put a lot of work on the plates of the development team. (It didn’t end up mattering, though, as disagreements on the budget scope led to that incarnation of the arena deal falling apart four days before Christmas.)

The 2024 conditions are, in comparison, pretty tame, probably because a lot of the legwork has already been done because of how the 2021 review went – they boil down to “Hey, make sure you build what we’re approving here and get the appropriate clearances at the appropriate stages.” A couple examples include deciding what the public commemoration of the Saddledome will be by December 2026 and working to finalize the indigenous art components for the eastern wall facing 5A Street; these are things they would’ve needed to do anyway, regardless of whether the Planning Commission made them conditions.

In other words: a lot of the back and forth has already taken place, and this Planning Commission review is putting a bow on what’s already happened and propelling things head-long into construction in the New Year. It’s the final administrative approval before putting together the building can begin. Now the fun part starts.