Calgary Event Centre | 36.85m | 11s | CSEC | HOK

[bgarneau]

If those are the renderings, imagine the final product...

and at $650mm, the design should be held to a high standard - striving for good enough or 'acceptable' wasn't their strategy, so how did they land at that? Surely they could have found a few hundred grand in the budget to articulate that blank wall. I hope the design team provides some response commentary so we at least understand why certain decisions were made.

 

[MissingMiddle]

I remember some insiders giving us a few verbal details of the exterior months before we actually got any renderings.

So, do they have any juicy secrets to spill as to what the interior might look like??

I haven't seen renders, but I've seen the interior design precedent and all the plans.

I wouldn't expect gold plated ceilings, but it seems pretty on par with recent arenas of this scale. The club sections and bars will be pretty cool, with a few feature elements that people will appreciate. I don't have anything on the concourse aside from the (now) publicly available plans.

 

[dazzlingdave88]

I think people are misplacing CMLC’s roles. There is CMLC as neighbourhood planner, CMLC as a potential deputent at CPC, CMLC as a rep of the city, and CMLC as a construction project manager.

Only the last one is over. The arena could have been knocking it out the park urban design wise and CSEC would have still asked it to be removed as construction project manager. Because if CSEC is 100% responsible for overruns, the construction manager better be 100% responsible to CSEC.

I get that CSEC has agreed to take on the risk of cost overruns, so therefore should have huge influence on the construction manger, but a different perspective would be that city has now agreed to give $325 million and now has no input?

 

[haltcatchfire]

Is the bent cladding a metaphor for “bend over and take it”?

 

[darwink]

I get that CSEC has agreed to take on the risk of cost overruns, so therefore should have huge influence on the construction manger, but a different perspective would be that city has now agreed to give $325 million and now has no input?

It isn't like the City was unaware of the design and CSEC baited and switched them.

I don’t really get it - do you expect that if CMLC was still project manager that the project would be much different? They were for a long time and were there when the capacity and bowl design decisions were made - the most important for the project. Quite frankly when it was realized the site was more constrained than they initially thought and it was leading to too many compromises that there wasn’t a pause then to try to get more land was the biggest mistake. And that is on CMLC - they accepted the compromises instead of looking for more land.

 

[dazzlingdave88]

It isn't like the City was unaware of the design and CSEC baited and switched them.

I don’t really get it - do you expect that if CMLC was still project manager that the project would be much different? They were for a long time and were there when the capacity and bowl design decisions were made - the most important for the project. Quite frankly when it was realized the site was more constrained than they initially thought and it was leading to too many compromises that there wasn’t a pause then to try to get more land was the biggest mistake. And that is on CMLC - they accepted the compromises instead of looking for more land.

Fair points. The whole process lacked transparency. Every single meeting note should be released at some point to get the full picture. It would be very interesting to see the design iterations presented and what each party (council, CMLC and CSEC) had to say about. I have a very hard time with giving a for-profit organization that is run by billionaires a public subsidy with very little meaningful public consultations or debate and that has such a major multi-decade impact on a large area of our inner city. Just think if this whole process was given the same level on scrutiny as the cycle network.

I guess I'm more concerned about moving forward from this point. CSEC at this moment in time has a shitty design made public and has no obligation whatsoever to make it better and all the financial incentive to make it worse, through value engineering and removing features that add to the public realm. And I don't know all the legal details, but I can imagine the city now has very little say about changes from this point on.

 

[1875]

seriously. why cant we have good billionaires like eveyone else?

 

[darwink]

They can make material changes - the city doesn’t really enforce in those. But once the DP is approved and then the BP, changing the floor plan would mean an approval by the city - not as owner but as the city.

 

[Silence&Motion]

seriously. why cant we have good billionaires like eveyone else?

Every other city's billionaires:

 

[Dārayavauš]

Every other city's billionaires:

Yeah they don't really exist.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

seriously. why cant we have good billionaires like eveyone else?

We don't have a billionaire involved with the Flames. Last time I checked, London, England has a billionaire who owns the Flames. Or at least that's where he is when we ask him to pay taxes; luckily he's willing to let us spend our tax money on his team's arena.

 

[The Familia]

Someone on a Facebook group I’m part of mentioned that they just saw some updated renders of the new arena. They said should be made public in October. The big take away is the north side has been changed and now includes retail. As well, the white mesh ribbon around the front has been refined. Parkade remains but with some new exterior that could light up or be projected on.
I’ll wait and see but could be promising…

 

[Duck Lightning]

Someone on a Facebook group I’m part of mentioned that they just saw some updated renders of the new arena. They said should be made public in October. The big take away is the north side has been changed and now includes retail. As well, the white mesh ribbon around the front has been refined. Parkade remains but with some new exterior that could light up or be projected on.
I’ll wait and see but could be promising…

There's already retail on the north side in the floor plan, It's just hard to see in the current renders. A couple of retail bays sit by a windowed section midway along the first floor and are labeled as Retail - Sponsor and Retail - restaurant chicken. There're also exterior patios planned for the north side too.

 

[haltcatchfire]

The new rendering might now have the word Retail depicting signage on the north side. That should cover it.

 

[Mountain Man]

The retail has always been there, it's just obscured by the trees in the rendering. If you look they even have some patio tables an all that in the render. I think there should have been as much retail facing 12 as there is on 4th, but there may be concerns about how much this area could actually support.