Pressure builds to OK arena

With less than a month until a Katz Group-imposed deadline for a deal on a downtown arena, the Oilers president and CEO is pleading for supporters to increase pressure on politicians to push through the plan.

“I am sending this note to our key supporters because now is the time to mobilize,” reads the email sent Monday by Patrick LaForge. “If you and your organizations support the proposed downtown arena and Edmonton Arena District, it is important that you be heard and make your support known.”

LaForge, reached by phone, wouldn’t say how many people or exactly to whom he sent the message. But he said he sent it to personal friends who asked for more information and facts about the issue. “We encourage you to speak out in whatever way you feel is most effective and appropriate,” LaForge wrote in the email. “All we ask is that you do so, and do so over the next few weeks, while there is still time to make it happen.”

He then provided options for people, saying they could speak to or email city councillors, call Edmonton’s 311 line to express their opinions, write letters to The Journal, call radio shows or post messages on social media sites.

“There’s no call to action there,” LaForge said in an interview. “This is not a campaign and I didn’t start one. I didn’t give them a script or words. I provided them with background information as requested.”

He said he was “concerned about the state of affairs relative to the arena project.

“I wanted to share the facts with people and so I didn’t send it to the world, but I did send it to people I know are most interested.”

At the bottom of the email, LaForge included his personal cell number and a list of details, including:

The Oct. 31 deadline “is real”, he wrote. “We have already invested countless hours and over $25 million to bring the project to this point. We simply cannot invest many millions more, as well as the time and energy required, into a project that has no commercial certainty;”

The Katz-Oilers group made significant concessions, including accepting a ticket tax which “more than doubled” Daryl Katz’s arena contribution;

An NHL team is not sustainable in Edmonton without a new arena, since the current one is one of the oldest and smallest in Canada;

The Oilers are the only team in the NHL that does not receive non-hockey revenues from other events in their home arena;

The project has backer on city council who need support. “It’s time for leaders to lead,” the background information read.

“I’m not debating the facts,”LaForge said in an interview. “I’m saying the facts, so I sent out the history as I know it.”

Coun. Tony Caterina, who does not support the current proposal for the downtown arena, said some of those facts, as well as ones in an included Sept. 29 letter from Katz Group vice-president John Karvellas, were “idiotic.”

Caterina said the ticket tax is not Katz’s $125-million contribution, but a contribution made by Edmontonians and hockey fans who would have to pay it to attend events.

“That is a complete lie,” Caterina said. “That’s not his contribution at all. He can charge whatever he wants for his tickets and keep that money.”

Caterina said the Katz Group’s suggestion it has committed $525 million to the project is false, since that dollar figure includes the price paid to buy the Oilers in the first

place.

“He purchased that business as a business in order to be profitable,” Caterina said.

“When they come to that conclusion, throwing in the price of the team that the Katz Group paid for the franchise, (it) certainly is idiotic.”

Caterina said everyone is free to phone him and other councillors to express their support for or disagreement with the arena, but he said LaForge’s “campaign” is obviously one-sided.

“Call it for what it is and explain to people exactly what you’re doing,” he said. A similar campaign was launched in the spring, Caterina said, when Oilers’ friends and employees called 311 to “balance the number of the calls from the general public,” the majority of whom were opposed.

Coun. Kerry Diotte said most people support a downtown arena, but not the current deal. Without $100 million from the province or a non-compete clause with Northlands, Diotte said it can’t move forward.

But he said he supports LaForge’s message that “now is the time to mobilize.

“If that is not a call to action, what the heck is?” Diotte said. “I hope that everybody, regardless of their opinion, follows the advice and lets councillors know what they think about this deal and let 311 know and let the world know. That’s a good thing.”

Katz Group spokesman Steve Hogle offered a statement via email.

“Supporters regularly ask us what they can do to help make this project a reality,” Hogle wrote.

“We welcome people being informed of the ways they can make their views known.”