The Oilers' new downtown Edmonton arena complex, to be called Rogers Place, is "on schedule to open" for the '16-17 NHL season, according to Gordon Kent of the EDMONTON JOURNAL. The project's total cost will be C$606M, which includes the arena itself, a "Winter Garden pedestrian crossing," Light Rail Transit link, land, pedestrian corridor and attached community rink. The venue will seat 18,641for hockey, and will feature what is being called the "largest high-definition arena scoreboard in the NHL." Katz Group Exec VP/Sports & Entertainment Bob Black said that the scoreboard will be 20% bigger than that of the Pepsi Center, and "five times larger than the Rexall Place scoreboard." Icon Venue Group Senior VP Dan Vaillant yesterday "helped lead the first media tour of the site" (EDMONTON JOURNAL, 6/3). In Edmonton, John MacKinnon notes there will be "about 9,000 seats in the lower bowl of the new arena, including more than 1,100 loge-style seats." Vaillant said, "They come in fours and sixes. So, smaller companies or groups of individuals can buy one of these loge boxes, they don’t have to fill a 24-seat suite on a regular basis." He added the initial investment for a loge is "not going to be anywhere near what it is for a suite" (EDMONTON JOURNAL, 6/3). Vaillant: "You look back at a lot of the buildings which have been built recently, especially when you top-load a building, the upper concourse tends to be very tight. On this one here, we didn’t cut back on any of that. ... It’s going to be second to none from the standpoint of being a game-changer for NHL arenas. This one has it all" (EDMONTON SUN, 6/3).
