Scotia Place arena details revealed as development permit approved

The development permit for Calgary's new event centre was approved and new details about the forthcoming Scotia Place were revealed Thursday.

It's likely the last major hurdle that needed to be cleared to build the $920-million event centre and new home of the Calgary Flames.

The new details shown to the Calgary Planning Commission on Thursday included new renderings of how the building will look.

Members of the commission voted unanimously to approve the permit for Scotia Place, which will seat 18,400 people for hockey games and sporting events and 20,000 for concerts. It will be built in Calgary's Victoria Park neighbourhood.

The new arena will be owned by the City of Calgary and operated by the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSEC), which owns the NHL's Calgary Flames and other sports properties.

Excavation work is already underway at the arena site. The building will be ready for the hockey season in fall 2027.

The building will be equipped with 600 solar panels that will generate on-site power and will be connected to the District Energy Centre on Ninth Avenue S.E., the city says. The venue is designed to be fully electrified and net-zero by 2050.

Susie Darrington, Scotia Place project committee member and vice-president of building operations at CSEC, told reporters the new building will be a significant leap forward from its predecessor, the Saddledome. She says Scotia Place was designed to be flexible, so it can be configured differently in the future as market demands change. 

"One of the biggest challenges with the Saddledome is just being able to move around it. We'll be a fully accessible building from the street level. And then we also will provide elevators and escalators to move within the building," Darrington said.

She added the new building's roof will be able to sustain 400,000 tons, a large improvement from the Saddledome roof, which has a 90,000-ton limit.

Darrington says such features will make Scotia Place attractive for large concerts.

Scotia Place will have 20 per cent more bathrooms than Rogers Place in Edmonton and 60 per cent more than the building code requires for an arena of its size. Darrington says a third of the restrooms will be able to accommodate all people, regardless of gender, because some events will have a larger female demographic in attendance, while others will have more of a male audience.

"That gives us a really great opportunity to change the bathrooms back and forth depending on how we want to customize that event for the fans coming," she said.

The design team consulted with Indigenous communities and looked at five major arenas in North America when planning Scotia Place. Those included Rogers Place in Edmonton, Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minn., T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

A new city-operated community arena, separate from the main arena, may be used by CSEC teams during the day for practice but will be available for recreational use during afternoons and evenings.

Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, who is also a member of the Calgary Planning Commission, lauded plans for Scotia Place on Thursday. 

"This building, in my opinion, is a best in class situation … every other aspect of this building sings in terms of building a public realm that is worthy of the vision, and I am over the moon and delighted and very grateful of the team that put it together," said Carra, councillor for Ward 9.

Bob Hunter, the project director for the new arena, says the event centre is a tremendous project for the city. He called it a unique amenity, unlike anything that's been built in Calgary.

"Citizens of Calgary will think, 'You know what? This is actually a pretty good investment on our behalf,'" Hunter said.

"This building is going to enhance the amount of events that come, the type of events. It's just going to be so much bigger and better than the Saddledome."

He added that so far the project is adhering to the budget that was originally set out.

"You're always going to have budget challenges. We challenge it every day and we're always working on it. But right now we're on time and on budget," Hunter said.

City council voted unanimously to pay most of the upfront costs of the new arena while CSEC is contributing $40 million. CSEC will then make annual payments to the city of $17 million for 35 years, escalating by one per cent each year.

The provincial government is contributing more than $300 million toward the new entertainment district around the arena. That includes some money for the new community arena as well as infrastructure improvements such as a new underpass along Sixth Street S.E. that will link the district with the East Village.

The province will also cover the cost of demolishing the Saddledome, which opened in 1983. That will happen after Scotia Place opens.