[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Black Star

Cost of the arena is $480 million, $130 million paid by the Katz Group, $125 million paid for by a ticket tax on all tickets sold at the venue and $200 million from the City and $25 million from other levels of government for the second ice surface/community rink to be used for the public and nearby university. The City's portion will be paid via a Community Revitalization Zone Levy (CRL) and other extra revenue like parking. Note that there was no tax rate increase in order to pay for any part of the arena.

The philosophy behind the CRL program is:

Major revitalization projects attract and increase local activity, investment and development. Economic growth creates additional tax revenue for all orders of government. Additional municipal and provincial property taxes from the economic growth will help fund the original project.

The amount of new tax revenue that the lands in and around the arena will make for the City on an annual basis, FAR exceeds the $200 million that the City has seeded into this project. There is currently over $2.5 billion in construction going on in the Arena district itself including a 56 floor hotel,69 floor office/condo. A 29 floor office and other retail businesses including a grocer, movie theater complex, restaurants, bars, etc. This district has fast forwarded many new condo high rises that have been announced since the arena was started and would not have existed without the new arena.

The CRL funding forecasts are based on only 40% of the growth predicted in Rollo’s conservative model, and still the CRL was calculated to generate, in net present value, $473 million in new taxes over 20 years.

So how investing $200 million in this multi billion district, getting almost $500 million in new taxation revenue (maybe more) AND revitalizing the city's downtown at the same time is a bad deal?

OMG. It's neither $200 million or $2.5 billion. That's just rhetoric. No one is denying it didn't accelerate some development however, patience would have built office, retail, residential anyways without a CRL looming over it. We won't know for a while if it created additional demand for commercial/residential or a looming glut is on the horizon from all the space being built at once. Even then, that doesn't mean a CRL was a good choice.