haltcatchfire
Senior Member
That plaza photo is a rendering though. What does it really look like?
Calgary Event Centre | 36.85m | 11s | CSEC | HOK
- Thread starter Meikkhaell
- Start date
That plaza photo is a rendering though. What does it really look like?
Chinese_T
Active Member
Come to think of it, I have never actually seen what the plaza looks like. I've seen many renders of it, never a photo of it in real life...
darwink
Senior Member
I guess we'll have to see what it looks like when it's fully finished, but right now it's not looking like the renderings. It's actually awful, though it might improve once some businesses are ion there. Even when it's finished I doubt it'll be like the renderings. Renderings of public spaces always look nicer than the finished product. In the rendering of Rogers Place we see a nice sunlit plaza with lots of people, but in reality it'll rarely ever be like that. It'll be busiest in the winter, and in nice weather during the summer, the plaza itself will a lot colder and windswept than the renderings are showing. Having a Loblaws in there will help somewhat, but not enough.
I've never been a fan of the whole ICE district and the plaza, but that's just me. I'm not a big fan of those kinds of master designs, I'm not even much of a fan of LA Live, and it's probably the only example that has some half decent vibrancy. I'm hoping the new arena will have facades that run parallel to the streets and have retail. At least something to give it a chance to have a semi-vibrant street feel.
I've never been a fan of the whole ICE district and the plaza, but that's just me. I'm not a big fan of those kinds of master designs, I'm not even much of a fan of LA Live, and it's probably the only example that has some half decent vibrancy. I'm hoping the new arena will have facades that run parallel to the streets and have retail. At least something to give it a chance to have a semi-vibrant street feel.
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The Familia
Active Member
Rogers in Edmonton is not perfect but it’s not bad. The one time I was there I found it a little too cold and sterile. The plaza is very bare with too much concrete and not enough trees. I also felt that all the towers surrounding it made it feel confined and dark. I’m hoping the new Flames arena will be a little more open and street friendly. More trees and a nice water feature would go a long way!
Patrick.1980
Active Member
Exactly what I was going to say. Overall the arena in Edmonton is pretty good, and is an upgrade from their previous arena, but there are lessons to be learned. I agree 100% about the cold sterile feel, and I'm not a fan of the tall buildings around it. They are part of the reason it has that cold lifeless feel. I hate the way the Marriot looms over it, and I hate the way the superwide +15 from the Marriott shades out the only bit of street frontage the arena has. I hope that any buildings built around the new arena are more on the low to mid rise scale.
Strange how things change. When Rogers Place was first getting built, I really liked the design and all the action surrounding the building, but now I have the opposite opinion. The building itself is still pretty cool, but the whole 'feel' of its surroundings and how it integrates with its surroundings is terrible.. It's a remix of Scotia Place in Toronto, which is unfortunately the same thing. Centre Bell in Montreal and MTS in Winnipeg do a better job of integrating with its surroundings, but still miss the mark for the most part. I hope the group of HOK/Stampede/CSED/CMLC can learn from the mistakes of places like Edmonton and Toronto and design something that will set the bar on street frontage and surrounding area integration.
gsunnyg
Senior Member
Instead of directly incorporating street activation into the arena design, why can't they build a fancy arena separately, then leave some room along Olympic Way for separate midrise developments that can just flank along the west side of the arena.? I think that works much better. You get the best of both worlds A nice design and a more human pedestrian experience. Even though Capital one does have street activation, I think the design is poor and doesn't feel much like a human-scaled development. I'm always concerned with how poorly large block projects try to incorporate retail activation by breaking up the materials. We all saw how disastrous the RioCan podium turned out on Arris.
adamyyc
Active Member
Scotia Place definitely doesn’t interact well with the street, but it doesn’t really need to. MLSE would have been challenged to create a great pedestrian experience on the small footprint they had to work with in that location. The building is bound by the Gardner Expressway / Lakeshore Avenue to the south, a harsh section of Yonge Street (perhaps less harsh now with CIBC Square across the street), and rail lines to the north. The land to the west was far too valuable not to develop to its full potential. I’d argue the land that Scotia Arena is on is more valuable than any other rink in the league (save except for MSG). Scotia Arena has the benefit of being located in an area that is densely populated, that has a plethora of hotels and restaurants, is surrounded by corporate headquarters, and is connected to Union Station which sees >200k commuters per day. MLSE has also created something pretty cool with Maple Leaf Square/Jurassic Park that I think a lot of organizations would like to emulate.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Isn't Toronto's arena one of the best used facilities in the league / North America Pre-COVID? I'm sure there is some industry metrics used, but it would be interesting to measure utilization through counting "major event days" or something. I wouldn't be suprised if Scotia Place probably has 4-5X the utilization as the Saddledome.
adamyyc
Active Member
It definitely has a high utilization. There wouldn’t be too many off-nights between the Leafs, Raptors, Rock, concerts, etc.
This is my experience also. I liked the design for the arena and ice district when it first came out, but don't like it as much now. I wasn't overly impressed after seeing the arena and the ice district in person. To be fair, I saw the area on a day when there wasn't a game happening, but it really had the cold sterile feel that others have mentioned, and it was in the middle of summer.
I think overall it's a win, as the area was pretty awful before the Ice District and arena were built, but I hope that our new arena and the area around it is developed differently. My preference would be a solid arena design with good street interaction, followed by organic development around it.
As for the arena itself, if the arena design is crazy funky cool, that's a bonus, but crazy funky cool designs can become dated quickly, I'd prefer something elegant and timeless with a great street design, and something that integrates with its surroundings.
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Zoom
Active Member
That's a good point. They did reasonably well with the parcel they had, and as you said, the area around it is already dense and busy and doesn't need an arena to boost things. Victoria Park could use an arena to boost its vitality, but really other kinds of developments are better suited for that.
The arena needs perform its role of hosting sporting events and concerts while at the same time not being a black hole. I hope the design is more contemporary than Little Caesar's arena, but if the street treatment is similar I'll be happy.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
That's part of the challenge to successfully design in an antidote to the poison that is the many non-game days and non game hours of game days and events. Sure Edmonton's plaza will feel vibrant when there's 20,000 fans streaming through for two hours before the game or event, but the rest of the time it's going to be a cold sterile windswept bazarnaya ploshchad'.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
I think the teams/ arena boosters try to glide over this fact in arena debates: an arena offers at least as many (or more) de-activation issues as they offer activation opportunities. We often only see an improvement because the area is so desolate to begin with, anything is better (Saddledome, ICE District). The real activation doesn't come from arena at all in most cases, it comes from the surroundings and an arena design that contributed to it, but at a minimum does no harm.
Toronto and New York got it right in this case. Although the decision was all made on land economics, the result was they sucked up as little excess land as possible for their arena and bolted it right into the heart of their transportation system. Both arenas aren't anything to look at (IMO) but their highly efficient, highly functional role is the key success. They preserved the rest of the area to be way better utilized and create the vibrancy and vibe that people are attracted to. Perhaps it's a bit ironic, but by minimizing the role the arena plays in creating vibrancy they succeeded far better than most attempts that put the arena first.
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I think the case of NYC and Toronto is different than Calgary's case given the pure density, and the amount of times the arena is used, which in those cities the arenas I believe is more than half the days of the year. It's the right set up. I'd still like to see Calgary's arena offer some street interaction with some retail/restos, but I 100% agree, it shouldn't be the anchor for the area's vibrancy. It really needs to not bring the area down. Not .having surface parking lots around it, already solves part of that problem. the and as Victoria park gets developed over time as expected the area will be continually improve.