The Flames do not benefit from cost overruns due to incremental scope from the City. If CSEC decided, for example, to add additional onsite enclosed parking, would the City be expected to share in the incremental cost?
Council is showing its inexperience in trying to add scope as CSEC would look for any excuse to not cover overruns from additional scope or general cost inflation.
Incremental scope increases from the City is not what has happened here. The new mayor and council have had zero influence over the agreement that was struck in July (other than the ones who were part of the Council back then), nor any of the conditions on the development permit. The twitter thread that
@outoftheice posted above helps clarify things, but I will add more to this in this post.
I will start by saying all of what I am about to type is purely my speculation. I have had ZERO involvement in this project. But, I am very familiar with the City's approval process, and the wording and writing of conditions of approval on development permits. I will also note that, when the revised agreement from this summer (the one where CSEC agreed to take on 100% of the cost overruns) was made in July, Council decreed a CPC date for the project, despite a DP not even being submitted yet. This is unheard of. How can you say a review will be completed by a certain date, when plans had not even been submitted? C'est la vie, administration (to their enormous credit) came through, and the DP was approved by planning commission on November 18th.
For those that are interested, here is a link to the CPC agenda and video from November 18th. The Arena is item 7.1.2. I have not watched the video for the arena item. I remember watching that afternoon, but they spent a large amount of time (as they should have) on the Kensington apartment project that is item 7.1.1, so had to stop viewing before they got to the arena:
pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com
The document that matters the most for the situation this project currently finds itself in, is the Conditions of Approval (COA). This can be found here:
The COA is the legal obligations any applicant has to meet before proceeding with building their development. Prior to Release means essentially prior to beginning construction. Permanent Conditions are rules that must be observed at all times during the life of the development. Advisory Comments are just that, advisory statements about relevent things, but not really of legal bearing.
That said, let's look at the COA a bit. Conditions 4, 5 and 6 seem to be the source of the "climate emergency action" stuff that is causing Murray Edwards heartburn:
#6 is the big one, requiring that CSEC show exactly where and how they plan to put solar panels on the roof of the event centre. Now before people say this is something the City should not be requiring on buildings, take a look at numbers 4 and 5. Again, I haven't been involved in this project so am just speculating, but I read those conditions as saying that the applicant submitted two reports in support of their application; The Calgary Event Centre Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Assessment, and the Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment Report. Why did they submit these reports, and did they recommend using solar panels for this facility? If so, is #6 merely holding them to their word? Doesn't seem like this came out of the blue, and may have even been their own initiative. I am not sure if these reports have ever been asked for for other downtown developments (but then again, neither has a 50% subsidy....). Maybe these reports were a condition of the financing deal struck by CSEC and Council? But if they were, again, this is not somethig Mayor Gondek and the new Council have suddenly demanded. Rather, it seems like something that was agreed to much earlier in the process.
If you go further down the document into the Permanent Conditions, you see the following:
Again, these conditions speak to requirements that seemed to have been studied and made as part of the application process (#54 especially, where the report recommended a "preferred option").
For the public realm complaints from Murray Edwards, I see nothing in this document that isn't a standard requirement of ANY downtown development. Take a look at BLVD, and what the sidewalk on 12th Ave looked like before that project went ahead:
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.ca
When you see the finished product, with the most recent photos in the projec thread, that is not The City that came in and did the work. It was One Properties, the developer. This is just standard fare for downtown development.
Warning, me REALLY editorializing on the next part......
Did all of this get missed by CSEC because they were in such a f*cking hurry to ram this through before their boy Jeff Davison was gone from Council, and they faced a great unkown of newly elected officials, and there $300 million subsidy would be put at risk? If they were so pissed about these requirements, why not appeal their DP's approval to the SDAB, to get these conditions removed? Should be easy, if they are so unfair and onerous, right? And before people say, why would you appeal your approval, this is something that happens regularly, to deal with conditions that are not appropriate.
I get the sense that the actual budget to build this thing has skyrocketed, and they are now greatly regretting agreeing to be responsible for 100% of the cost overruns, but are looking to blame a new mayor and council to try and save face. If they get further concessions out of them, that is just a bonus. But, I feel like they are just looking for a scapegoat to allow them to back out of their committments that they so publicly made, in the name of what was supposed to be unquestionably "for the good of Calgary".
Anyway, that is my take. Hopefully this helps shed some light on the possible events, and thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
