Gary Bettman says the “Flames are committed to Calgary” despite failed arena deal
Gary Bettman doesn’t blame the Calgary Flames for having their downtown arena deal fall through.
The NHL commissioner spoke to media ahead of the NHL All-Star Skills Competition on Friday in Las Vegas and said that he supports the Flames’ decision to walk away from a deal with the City of Calgary as more costs continued to get added to the project.
“The Flames are committed to Calgary. They’re a vital part of the community,” Bettman said. “I think the mayor was just quoted as saying, ‘Well, now that the deal is off, everybody is a free agent.’ I think the club feels OK about that because the deal kept changing on them.
I know there has been a change of administrations but each time they made an accommodation to try to deal with things that the city was asking for that weren’t part of the basic deal, the deal kept getting more and more expensive and frankly wasn’t what they had agreed to. And at some point, you have to say enough is enough.”
The plan was for the Flames and the City to come together and build a $634 million facility in downtown Calgary. Ground was supposed to break on the project in 2022 but the deal collapsed in December as the City sought an extra ~$10 million for climate and infrastructure inclusions.
The Flames currently play in the Scotiabank Saddledome, which is one of the oldest stadiums in the league. Bettman said that Calgary needs to make major renovations to the Saddledome in order to get it up to a modern standard.
“The Saddledome needs work, which the city is going to have to put a bunch of money into,” Bettman said. “I think the sooner people figure out how to get a new arena, the better it will be, particularly because the cost of building a building keeps going up. These delays haven’t been helpful.”
The full clip of Bettman’s answer can be viewed here…
Shoutout to @tyleryaremchuk for asking Gary Bettman about the Flames arena situation.
I missed the first few seconds of Gary’s response but got the rest. pic.twitter.com/uqORq9Ygr5