THE QUEEN CITY’S ON AGAIN, OFF again stadium project is on again. But this time, the project is missing a retractable roof and a couple of hundred million dollars in costs. The location has also been moved from the downtown site that was the cornerstone of a $1-billion revitalization initiative unveiled by Mayor Pat Fiacco a year ago.

That’s another thing that’s missing: Mayor Pat, the driving force behind the proposed $431-million, retractable-roofed stadium, has since declared he’s not running for a fifth term of office. And he’s been conspicuously absent from the announcements on new plans for a less expensive stadium option.

Instead, city manager Glen Davies and chief financial officer Brent Sjoberg played the role of cheerleaders for the new stadium, which would be located at Evraz Place, the city-owned fairgrounds a couple of long punts from Mosaic Stadium (which would be demolished). The new, 33,000-seat stadium would cost $278 million and be open to the air.

One of the stumbling blocks appears to be negotiations over the 33-acre Canadian Pacific container yards downtown. The original plan included the entire site, while the latest plan has only 17.5 acres – clearly not large enough for a football stadium. Rail spur lines, which would have to be removed at significant cost, likely made acquisition of the entire downtown site too expensive.

Undoubtedly, moving the stadium to city-owned Evraz Place will reduce the project’s land costs. But $278 million is still a lot of money, and most of it will have to come from the province. The city has formally requested $200 million from the provincial government, while the remaining costs would be borne by the municipality.

There’s some fairness in this, as the province had turned down a request from Regina and the Saskatchewan Roughriders back in 2008 to renovate 80-year-old Mosaic Stadium for $110 million.

And the province, which boasts tremendous resources wealth, a balanced budget and one of the fastest-growing economies in Canada, can certainly afford to pay the lion’s share of the proposed project.

But while Premier Brad Wall has confirmed that the “status quo” (i.e., renovating Mosaic Stadium) is “not on,” he’s not prepared to commit $200 million to the new stadium just yet, citing lack of detail.

As for the city’s $80-million portion of the project, a combination of facility fee hikes, amusement and hospitality taxes, plus a 1% property tax hike, would cover the increased borrowing costs.

Much has transpired since March 2011, when the federal government announced that it would not be contributing $100 million to the construction of the retractable-roofed stadium project. The entire proposal collapsed like a house of cards without the hoped-for federal funding.

Undeterred, Fiacco resurrected the stadium project six weeks later as part of a larger downtown-revitalization initiative, worth about $1 billion. One year later, while the revitalization plan lives on, the multi-purpose facility is now, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water.

© 2012 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.