The Oilers on Saturday will officially open the Rogers Place Presentation Centre, the marketing hub for their C$480M downtown arena opening in fall of '16. Local media this afternoon will get a tour of the C$2M presentation center. The cost to build the presentation center was shared between the city of Edmonton and The Katz Group, the arena development company owned by team Owner Daryl Katz. The Oilers developed the center in-house after signing a multiyear lease to retrofit a two-story building one block south of the arena construction site. The first floor encompasses a condominium presentation room tied to the Ice District, the name of the mixed-use development surrounding the arena. The second floor focuses on arena development with individual rooms showcasing a 12-person suite and a four-seat theater box. Rogers Place, designed by HOK, features 57 suites; 3,000 sideline club seats; 136 theater boxes, a hockey-only product; and 300 ledge seats, which are swivel chairs connected to drink rails. All told, the arena contains seven bars, two all-inclusive clubs and one full-service restaurant. One of the two clubs, the 250-seat Sky Lounge, a two-level space in the upper deck on the arena’s east end, targets a younger demographic with a curtain that comes down after NHL games to convert it into a nightclub setting. The new arena has multiple premium levels. By comparison, Rexall Place, the Oilers’ home since '74 when they played in the WHA, has 66 suites and 6,000 club seats with entrance from the concourses and no exclusive access to those spaces for the team’s high-end customers, Oilers Chief Commercial Officer Stew MacDonald said. The Oilers’ sales staff is using IO Media touch-screen technology on video walls to walk prospective buyers through the new products. The transitioning of the 70 existing suite holders, a few of which share suites, to the new units at Rogers Place will take place in August and September. Starting in mid-October and continuing through mid-December, the Oilers go through the same process for 5,000 season-ticket accounts covering 14,500 seats, MacDonald said. The Oilers are scheduled to announce pricing for premium seats tomorrow, he said.
