COVID-19 brings on planning delay for Calgary's new downtown arena

The Calgary Municipal Land Corporation has set down a 30-day pause in the process leading to construction of Calgary's new downtown arena.

The city-owned agency will oversee the construction of the $550-million arena in Victoria Park.

It had hoped to name the design team by the end of March. The team will include an architectural firm for the new building as well as structural, mechanical and electrical consultants.

However, the COVID-19 crisis hit as CMLC was between the first and second round of interviews with interested companies.

The president and CEO of CMLC, Kate Thompson, said they felt it was best to put the process on hold given the unprecedented circumstances.

"A lot of our proponents were actually travelling from away to come to the interviews," said Thompson.

"What we decided to do was take a pause, to reassess what our next step was. So we took a 30-day pause on procurement."

Timeline should be OK

She said they're looking at options for how they should proceed, especially if little changes withthe pandemic during the pause.

This delay isn't expected to affect the overall timeline on the arena project.

"I think we're early enough that we can absorb obviously a 30-day change right now. It's to be delivered in 2024. But you know, at the end of that 30 days, we'll re-assess and see where we are and what our next steps can be."

Once the design work is completed, construction on the publicly owned arena is slated to start in the summer of 2021.

The arena, which will have 18,000 to 19,000 seats, will open in time for the Calgary Flames season in the fall of 2024.

The City of Calgary and the owners of the Flames are splitting the cost of the new facility.

CMLC is also doing an environmental assessment of the arena site.

That work is nearly complete. So far, it says there are no major concerns or cause for any large scale remediation work prior to the start of construction.

Much of the site has been used as surface parking lots for a number of years.

Prior to that, most of the two square block area in Victoria Park was a residential area which dated back to the early 1900s.