In August 2015, the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation unveiled a bold new idea to solve several challenges being experienced regarding the city’s aging sports infrastructure: CalgaryNEXT. The concept combined an arena, football stadium and fieldhouse into one facility, located on the west side of downtown Calgary.
Roughly a year and a half later, CalgaryNEXT was functionally abandoned as an idea and attention shifted towards Victoria Park for arena negotiations. So what happened with CalgaryNEXT? Why was such a unique and clever idea seemingly destined to fail? Ryan digs into the fascinating, complicated history of CalgaryNEXT.
Sources:
-Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation/CalgaryNEXT.com (via Internet Archive)
-CAA ICON
-City of Calgary
-Calgary Municipal Land Corporation
-Mayor’s Office, City of Calgary
-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Hockey_League_arenas)
-Creative Commons images by Chuck Szmurlo and IceYYC
-Special thanks to CBC and the Calgary Herald, as their reporting provided a lot of useful information and context regarding the project
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6 Comments
Another nightmare and bad idea is Calgary adopting the Rockefeller "100 City's" agenda through Nenshi and currently Kondak. No one likes to talk about it.
The McMahon problem started to be solved with….. the amazing high budget… filling in cracks in the parking lot, but not repaving. Woo Hoo! lol Since then it's been pretty much the same. NEXT was a shell game mashup to try and open the public coffers for private wealth generation. Those guys were sketchy. And let me say Pike, this is journalism buddy. Hardcore journalism. Great piece. Good work.
The day Calgary next was announced I was building the international expansion for the Calgary airport with 960 on the radio. Steinberg was doing the afternoon show. Ken King announcing it, sounded fantastic. What an exciting day. The first day was the best day of Calgary next.
One of my biggest wants is to get rid of the keyboard they use currently at the dome and replace it with a more powerful organ keyboard, or hell, throw an actual organ in the new arena. I understand some might have nostalgia for the current one we have and the past and present people who played on it…. I am sorry but compared to most arenas it sounds like some cheap Casio bought from Toys R Us or Zellers in the 1980's. We need something more grandiose.
Pike, not only are you a giant wrench, you’re an Alberta media treasure! Please keep up all of your great work!
Hah, Ron bobblehead is awesome!