Ken King says CalgaryNEXT communication can be better
Posted Mar 9, 2016 6:45 pm.
Last Updated Mar 9, 2016 10:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As Calgary Sports and Entertainment President and CEO Ken King gives presentations about the CalgaryNEXT project, he said communication about the proposal for a new hockey arena can be better.
After speaking to home builders Wednesday afternoon, King was asked about local statistics suggesting a slight majority of Calgarians being opposed to using tax dollars for a new home for the Flames, along with a fieldhouse and events centre.
“I think communication is really important,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of misinformation here, but I asked this room and there were several hundred people there, my opening question was do you have enough information to have an informed opinion? Very few of them, there was a very small show of hands.”
“Think about this, the West Village is going to be developed with us or without us, the infrastructure needs to be put in, so it’s education. We just need to continue to try and get our message out and perhaps we need to do a better job of that.”
Calgary City Council is currently waiting to hear the results of a report on financial and environmental impacts of the massive project, which currently proposes the Flames pay $200 million.
The City of Calgary would pay $200 million, a Community Revitalization Levy would add $240 million and a ticket tax would pay $250 million.
That doesn’t take into account how much the creosote decontamination would be for the proposed site, which has ranged from an additional $50 million to $300 million.
King said when it comes big questions from the City, the levy will be a key one.
“Can we make the CRL work?” he said. “Can we generate enough future tax proceeds for a temporary period of time, if we all understand what a CRL is, in order to pay for the infrastructure, in order to make a portion of it to go to the contribution for the building.”
“It’s just as big a question for us as it is for them, so I think that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges and all we would like to do is to have an opportunity to try and make it work.”
The levy is a provincial loan, which is then repaid by the City through property taxes from new developments, while the tax is an additional surcharge to tickets, paid back to the City for borrowing the upfront $250 million.
“The next phase would be the City coming back and saying, look there seems to be enough compelling information here that we want to work, take the next step,” he said. “That includes more research, more engineering, more contemplation.”
The Flames are not suggesting they pay for the creosote cleanup, instead King said the strategy is to try and get municipal, provincial and federal governments together to come up with a solution.
“Perhaps each government can look at this and say that’s something that might be reasonable for us to do that can help stimulate a wonderful, big, big project,” he said. “It’s one thing to come and clean something up where nothing happens after that, but if you can clean this up and we can cause this to happen, that’s a huge legacy, that’s a great participation.”
COUNCILLOR WANTS CALGARIANS TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND
Ward 13 Cllr. Diane Colley-Urquhart said the current economic downturn is almost forcing public groups and organizations to come together to work on the project.
“I really think that we’ve come a long, long way, I think the timing is right, I encourage people to have an open mind, get the facts and that’s what this conversation has done,” she said,
“We’re fleshing out the funding model,” she said, adding the City already spending $30 million in taxpayer dollars to assemble land in West Village to sit idle is not good enough. “If you have the will to make things happen, you can find a way to make them happen.”
“When you spend taxpayer dollars on land that’s contaminated, you have a fiduciary responsibility to do something with it, to get your return on investment and even make more money for the citizens,” she added. “I don’t want people to get hung up on the details of individual numbers, if we have the will to make something like this happen that’s extraordinary, then we can make it happen.”
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Tuesday that he continues to wait for more information.
“We are continuing to wait for the results of the work that is underway right now around both the financial and environmental issues in that proposed West Village location, that’ll come to council probably sometime next month,” he said.
