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  #1  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 12:03 PM
EastVanMark EastVanMark is offline
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Surrey looking to build a Major Arena

Word out of Surrey is that mayor Diane watts is pushing for the construction of a major new arena capable of supporting professional hockey. Watts would like to see a bigger facility, something capable of hosting what the mayor calls "professional" hockey. She's currently talking with the provincial government about a public-private partnership that could lead to the construction of a new arena or events center in the town center, perhaps built as part of a convention center.

Vancouver could really use a forward thinking progressive mayor like her.
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 12:23 PM
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invisibleairwaves invisibleairwaves is offline
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Yes...unfortunately, Watts apparently wants to build it way out on the Cloverdale fairgrounds rather than in the city centre. I'm not at all convinced of the necessity for the arena, considering the brand-new facility next door in Langley and the new money-losing rink in Abbotsford, but if it has to be built, it really should go closer to transit and the "future downtown" of the city.

In the end though, the city really has much more important things to spend money on. Surrey could take the cost of a new 10,000 seat arena and spend it all on building sidewalks instead, and it still wouldn't be enough.
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  #3  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 2:54 PM
geoff's two cents geoff's two cents is offline
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Originally Posted by invisibleairwaves View Post
Yes...unfortunately, Watts apparently wants to build it way out on the Cloverdale fairgrounds rather than in the city centre. I'm not at all convinced of the necessity for the arena, considering the brand-new facility next door in Langley and the new money-losing rink in Abbotsford, but if it has to be built, it really should go closer to transit and the "future downtown" of the city.
Indeed, I think that a Cloverdale Fairgrounds arena is a terrible idea, especially considering the poor transit access, close proximity to Langley, and the dearth of cultural/entertainment attractions in what is supposed to be the city "centre."
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  #4  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 6:26 PM
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Originally Posted by EastVanMark View Post
Vancouver could really use a forward thinking progressive mayor like her.
I hope you're joking? Surrey is run by morons! Out of all the cities in Metro Vancouver Surrey is probably the least progressive. The roads are a mess, transit sucks, most neighborhoods are not pedestrian or bike friendly and many areas feel unsafe.

Why doesn't Diane Watts work on making Surrey a better place to live instead of building a useless arena? Does she have some delusion that Surrey could attract an NHL team because even AHL seems highly unlikely, and either way it would be a waste because most people would still only be interested in the Canucks.
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  #5  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 8:13 PM
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Wink

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Originally Posted by crazyjoeda View Post
I hope you're joking? Surrey is run by morons! Out of all the cities in Metro Vancouver Surrey is probably the least progressive. The roads are a mess, transit sucks, most neighborhoods are not pedestrian or bike friendly and many areas feel unsafe.

Why doesn't Diane Watts work on making Surrey a better place to live instead of building a useless arena? Does she have some delusion that Surrey could attract an NHL team because even AHL seems highly unlikely, and either way it would be a waste because most people would still only be interested in the Canucks.
Although if it means more of the Ed Hardy set from Surrey stays local and doesn't come into town, then great! The rest of the normal Surrey people are welcome to come and go as they please.
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  #6  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 8:54 PM
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Originally Posted by crazyjoeda View Post
I hope you're joking? Surrey is run by morons! Out of all the cities in Metro Vancouver Surrey is probably the least progressive. The roads are a mess, transit sucks, most neighborhoods are not pedestrian or bike friendly and many areas feel unsafe.

Why doesn't Diane Watts work on making Surrey a better place to live instead of building a useless arena? Does she have some delusion that Surrey could attract an NHL team because even AHL seems highly unlikely, and either way it would be a waste because most people would still only be interested in the Canucks.
is there a spot to be built on within city core?
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  #7  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2011, 10:00 PM
VanCvl VanCvl is offline
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is there a spot to be built on within city core?
I think the area around Scott Road would be a great place because it's very close to SkyTrain, New Westminster across Patullo, and close enough to City Centre and Scott Road to Newton.
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  #8  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 12:01 AM
Zassk Zassk is offline
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This stadium idea boggles the mind. The AHL and WHL already have fantastic facilities in the region. What tenant is going to come there? ECHL seems unlikely and will be perceived as inferior to the other two leagues. Another AHL or WHL franchise seems unthinkable. Are there really so many hockey audience dollars to go around?
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  #9  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 12:12 AM
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I think people are overlooking that it's not meant to be a hockey arena, it's an entertainment mutliplex. It will be more geared towards concerts, lectures/presentations, small conferences/conventions etc. That's not to say it''ll be a good idea and it will be successful but let's not confuse it with something it's not meant to be.
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  #10  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 12:17 AM
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Personally i think if surrey is building an arena for a "professional" hockey team it has to be in the city centre to draw more from the whole region. Cloverdale I wouldnt be against seeing an Trade centre building there but not an arena for a professional hockey team. As said earlier to out of the way.
Also the comment on ECHL if in the city centre would possibly be a good draw since as it stands there is only one canadian team in the league. Well it techinically is below AHL Surrey can't pull anothere AHL team over since there is already one in abbotsford. Which in my mind is manly failing due to its location. People like to transit out to games and everything so they dont have to deal with traffic and they could also drink before or after a game. Surrey will have this same problem in cloverdale. If they build an arena in Central they will have easy access to transit allowing people to hit up bars before and after the game thus also creating better Bussiness in the city centre from locals
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  #11  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 12:30 AM
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Originally Posted by vansky View Post
is there a spot to be built on within city core?
Heres just a few locations that could be used. Given a all have something on the lot but most of them are old building like the bright or that run down drugs store by gateway
http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF...04823&t=h&z=18
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  #12  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 1:12 AM
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Obviously those transit oriented locations are superior, but even the ridiculous idea of pro-hockey aside I'm not convinced a major arena in Surrey would get enough use. There's lots of competition from Rogers Arena, Thunderbird Arena, Pacific Coliseum, Langley Event Centre and the Abbotsford Entertainment Centre.

BTW, its disappointing to see so much available land around Surrey's Skytrain stations considering what's been done in other areas; even the Evergreen-line has more development and it doesn't even exist yet!
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  #13  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 1:29 AM
go_leafs_go02 go_leafs_go02 is offline
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Only idea I could see working potentially is a new City Centre arena fitting maybe 10,000 max which could then potentially poach the Giants from Pac Coliseum.

Anything larger than that - and it will become a white elephant.

I regularily go to Chilliwack Bruins games, and SoF hockey is coming quite saturated, The Heat in Abbotsford can't draw flies, the Langley Chiefs do OK, and Chilliwack does alright, it does outdraw the Heat, but the Heat coming in 2 years ago definitely did a chunk out of their ticket sales.
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  #14  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 6:06 AM
LotusLand LotusLand is offline
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Let's see the Canucks, Lions and Whitecaps are in Vancouver. The Giants are in Vancouver. I could care less if Surrey builds a 100,000 seat stadium. Fact is they can't attract top notch anything just liked the concerts and nightlife they have right now.

Watts needs to worry about attracting businesses to the core rather than some dumb grandiose stadium idea.

Also why does she keep wasting money on bringing in high profile people to Surrey's annual economic summit or whatever. She first needs to make Surrey more desirable to lower mainlanders before she can pitch it to anyone in the world. End rant.
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  #15  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:47 AM
vansky vansky is offline
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if this gets built, and the white caps stadium gets built, metro van got some really nice, fancy number of sports facilities....richmond oval, gm,bc, whitecaps, surrey, pacific center...

but i rather see new development of conference/convention centers, it's growing, and vcc is doing pretty well too
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  #16  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 4:35 PM
go_leafs_go02 go_leafs_go02 is offline
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Looking at this from a WHL standpoint, if you compare to the OHL near and around Toronto, there is the Mississauga Majors, the Brampton Battalion, and the Oshawa Generals. All those teams are within 40 km of each other.

In comparison, would an additional WHL franchise in say Surrey be worth it? You'd immediately set up a regional rivalry with Vancouver and Chilliwack. Not sure if there would be a big enough market for that. In Toronto they say, it's not a hockey town, it's a Leafs town, while the Giants prove otherwise, not sure if Surrey could support a hockey team.

Also, from what I understood, this was more of a developer coming to Surrey and proposing an arena in Cloverdale - this wasn't a brainstorm from Watts.
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  #17  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 5:38 PM
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Is it true that Abbotsford Heat are drawing poor crowds? I figured that the AHL would do well there. Both the Heat and the Bruins are utterly ignored by the Vancouver media, sadly. I suppose that might change if one of them moved to a location near SkyTrain in Surrey.

If in fact Phoenix moves back to Winnipeg in the NHL (we should finally know within a month), the Winnipeg owner has indicated he will move the AHL Moose. The likely scenario seems to be a shuffling of AHL franchises with the Canucks farm team being the one here in the Fraser Valley, and Calgary's farm team being in a new location on the prairies somewhere.

With a new affiliation with the Canucks, I could definitely see the AHL team moving to a new, larger arena in Surrey. But that's the only situation in which I can see the AHL moving to Surrey.
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  #18  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:33 PM
EastVanMark EastVanMark is offline
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Originally Posted by crazyjoeda View Post
I hope you're joking? Surrey is run by morons! Out of all the cities in Metro Vancouver Surrey is probably the least progressive. The roads are a mess, transit sucks, most neighborhoods are not pedestrian or bike friendly and many areas feel unsafe.

Why doesn't Diane Watts work on making Surrey a better place to live instead of building a useless arena? Does she have some delusion that Surrey could attract an NHL team because even AHL seems highly unlikely, and either way it would be a waste because most people would still only be interested in the Canucks.
Not joking at all actually. There are no bigger morons running a city than there is in Vancouver (other than possibly Burnaby). Road and neighborhood setups were inherited, not created by Watts. Most transit issues in least in part if not in whole are controlled by the provincial government. Watts has been active in aggressively trying to transform a troubled area which previous mayors largely only paid lip-service to and this arena initiative is yet another effort to improve both the quantity and quality of facilities available to residents of the regions second largest city.
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  #19  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:38 PM
go_leafs_go02 go_leafs_go02 is offline
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Originally Posted by Zassk View Post
Is it true that Abbotsford Heat are drawing poor crowds? I figured that the AHL would do well there. Both the Heat and the Bruins are utterly ignored by the Vancouver media, sadly. I suppose that might change if one of them moved to a location near SkyTrain in Surrey.

If in fact Phoenix moves back to Winnipeg in the NHL (we should finally know within a month), the Winnipeg owner has indicated he will move the AHL Moose. The likely scenario seems to be a shuffling of AHL franchises with the Canucks farm team being the one here in the Fraser Valley, and Calgary's farm team being in a new location on the prairies somewhere.

With a new affiliation with the Canucks, I could definitely see the AHL team moving to a new, larger arena in Surrey. But that's the only situation in which I can see the AHL moving to Surrey.
The Bruins are slightly outdrawn by the Heat, (Bruins 3,321.4 fans to date, vs Heat 3,492.5 fans per game to date) mainly because of a few reason - a) junior hockey is huge in Canada - while the AHL outside of the Moose doesn't seem to do good anywhere in Canada. b) the Heat are the Flames farm team, and much like how when I lived in Hamilton, I would refuse to cheer for the Bulldogs (AHL) because they were the Montreal Canadiens farm team, and I'm a Leaf fan. Same reason why Canucks fans won't cheer for the Flames farm team.

In relation to the Pacific Coliseum - I'm wondering how many years does that building have shelf-life remaining? I know it was given a significant upgrade for the Olympics, and I've been to about 4-5 Giants games in the last few years - but it still over 40 years old, and eventually it will need to be replaced.

I think marketing the Giants long-term as a Metro Vancouver team would be positive - especially if placed in Surrey City Centre near skytrain connections. Pac Coliseum is easily accessible by car, but no real other convenient method to the PNE grounds is available.

Still, if Surrey builds an NHL standard arena, I fear we'll be looking at a Glendale, Arizona problem with Coyotes if the arena has no major tenant. GM Place (rogers arena) is still state of the art, and I don't think the Canucks would ever move out of Vancouver-proper to Surrey.

So yeah, a 9-10,000 seat arena with the goal to replace the Pacific Coliseum as a major secondary venue would the only thing I see possible. And please put it in Surrey Centre, Cloverdale is out there, and besides the Langley Events Centre is about 8 km from there.
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  #20  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2011, 1:45 AM
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Its amazing reading all these comments. One thing we all seem to share in common is if surrey builds a 10,000 seat arena it should be in the city centre. Even if it isnt just for a hockey team and its more of a concert/convention centre area. It should be in the City centre.

It might actually help grow the area better. As it stands Central is failing largely but I think its because its still to based around the hope people living in the area and using transit to go places. It needs to start more focusing on things to do in the area. The arena is a good start in my mind It could be for hockey/concerts/trade shows/etc...
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