A Revived Arena Deal Breathes Life Back Into Hope For Nenshi’s Legacy

Bell: NHL arena deal, city pitch heads for council OK

During the day when I’m at home alone, I like to have a bit if background noise, so I usually have the radio on. More often than not, especially if I’m busy doing something, I don’t really pay attention to what’s being said. It’s more or less just noise.

You’re still hearing the words, you’re just focused on them, until you hear something that catches your attention. It’s usually something that surprises you enough to take your focus off of what you were doing and say “wait what?” aloud, usually as you are lifting your gaze up from where it had been.

This happened to me today when I heard the words “arena deal” during the top of the hour news break. Arena deal? What arena deal where? Ours was a dead fish. Well, that is until it wasn’t.

I made a point of consulting the vastness of the internets to see if i could find out what was going on, and sure enough, there it was. This was pretty optimistic sounding stuff that I was seeing. Could this seemingly dead fish be merely sleeping? Land ‘o Goshen! But, the great purple had declared it dead.

Had Ken King hired a faith healer to revive a deal once thought headed for the autopsy table? Did somebody come up with a plan so spectacularly amazing as to soften the mayor’s stance on it?

Not exactly.

Time For Plan B

What has happened is that the mayor’s great Olympic legacy dream was cremated, burnt to ash in a spectacular dumpster fire that was fueled by ineptitude.

The impossible had happened. Nenshi had counted on the complacency of the electorate, and his ability to sway them with cheap sentimentality. He thought it was in the bag. The medal ceremonies would be held in Nenshi square, and they’d present him with the biggest gold medal ever made.

Okay, maybe not that far, but it was clear the guy wanted them. Thousands upon thousands of tax dollars were spent in a misguided effort on the part of the Yes group, only to have their dreams absolutely crushed in the plebicite vote. A great deal of thanks to Save Calgary for leading the charge on this by the way.

Now, the city has come up with a $600 million dollar plan, an arena district type of idea on the Stampede Grounds. It is being readied to present to council. The city walked away from the table before, but now, a feasible sounding plan has been hatched to get the Flames back to the table.

But, as questions about public consultation and finance begin to pop up already, this is sounding eerily similar to the way the last cluster-fuck started. Administration will be given a ridiculous task to perform by council, in a ridiculously short period of time, leading to the production of a ten foot pile of crapola, that administration will blame on piss poor communication on the part of council, who will then lob the blame grenade back into the lap of administration. Five or six councillors will vacillate between making good points then asking irrelevant questions (or vice-versa), a few will be parked up the mayor’s ass and will do what he says no matter what, and Nenshi will hijack the meeting and attempt to browbeat the dissenters into seeing things his way.

Once again, it will be up to Sean Chu and Jeromy Farkas to step up and be the unwavering defenders of Calgary taxpayers and common sense thinkers. Along with save Calgary, these two worked tirelessly to prevent what would have been a disaster of Olympic proportion, and Calgarians can once again rely on them to look out for their best interests.

The way I see it, we are in for a replay of the whole 2024 fiasco again, with the word Olympics replaced by arena, or field house, or whatever. If it winds up being even half the gong show that 2024 was, this arena should provide us with some interesting council meetings for the many months this will end up dragging on for. I have a feeling I’m going to be sitting in the gallery with a bag of popcorn at least once in that time.

DBC