No questions on arena, but King says Flames aren’t posturing

He may not have answered multiple questions about a new arena and stalled talks with the city, but Calgary Flames President and CEO Ken King said his side isn’t messing around when it comes to walking away from the bargaining table.

“Anyone who mocks that statement, suggested as posturing or part of the negotiation, doesn’t know us very well and at best is agitating,” King said Monday at a packed Calgary Chamber of Commerce event. “You can also tell anyone with a contrary view, that it’s just not true because you know for sure because I just told you that.

“Trust me.”

The speech comes just three days after Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it was par for the course for sports teams to declare talks are truly over when it comes to negotiations between owners and municipal governments.

“I mean look, this is the script, it happens everywhere, it happened three times in Edmonton over 10 years,” Nenshi said Friday. “This is all about dollars and cents.”

On that topic, King did discuss the team’s economic fortunes – unfortunately changing for the worst.

“We’ve gone from a top 10 revenue contributing team where we wrote the cheques in the last few years to help the other teams,” he said. “We are now receivers, we’ll get a cheque this year, isn’t that ridiculous in this beautiful market?”

After the Flames released the proposal they gave to the city, King told 660 NEWS last week the issue was over.

At the beginning of his speech Monday, he told the crowd that if they were hoping to hear more about it, they would be disappointed.

“I apologize for that because it would be kind of fun,” King said. “That file is closed.”

What King did talk about was the economic and cultural importance of the team in Calgary, as well as the team’s history in managing a changing economic landscape since the Flames came to the city from Atlanta.

After an opening statement and video montage of the team’s history, he took questions from moderator and sports journalist Eric Francis.

Despite King’s early position, Francis persisted, first asking if there’s a misnomer that people have about the Flames position.

“Next question,” King said.

Later Francis referenced King’s earlier statements that the team can’t be competitive without a new arena.

“Would you quit it?” King responded. “The file’s closed.”

King also resisted talking about details about both the Flames and city offers, such as when he was asked to explain how a ticket surcharge being used to pay for a new arena is actually Flames revenue.

“I could, but I’m not going to,” he said.

MUNICIPAL ELECTION

While King stayed away from making any sort of political positions, the upcoming municipal election wasn’t avoided afterwards from incumbent councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart, mayoral candidate Bill Smith and billionaire businessman and philanthropist W. Brett Wilson.

“I’m happy to have him (Nenshi) elected again, but I want to see, is a thoughtful, progressive council that moves forward, we are going nowhere as fast as we possibly can,” Wilson said, adding he understands the Flames walking away from the table.

“There’s absolutely no point, if I was them, there’s no point in coming to the table to talk the current leadership if you will at City Hall, there’s no point,” he said.

Smith has been asked repeatedly by reporters throughout the campaign and challenged by opponents to make his position clear on which proposal he supports.

But when asked after King’s speech where he stands now, he said talks must start all over again.

“The reason I can’t even speak to that is they still haven’t CalgaryNEXT on the table, that’s still on the table,” he said. “There’s still a lot of things in play here, lots of things and I don’t think that we can say this proposal, this proposal are the ones that we’re going to go with.”

Smith also doubted the authenticity of the city’s offer details, saying Nenshi put together the information in two days behind closed doors.

He was asked to clarify, specifically if he thinks what was released to the public was not what was really presented to the Flames.

“That’s not what I said, I’m just saying, we’re just taking them at their word, we haven’t got any backup for that and the mayor was never at the table,” he said. “He got this information from one of the folks that he sent, an unelected representative to work with the Flames.”

Colley-Urquhart said while she thinks Nenshi made this an election issue by including a new arena as part of his future vision for the city, she does remain hopeful that talks can get back under way.

“The only benefit that’s really happened here in the last little while, is that really Calgarians are very much engaged and they weren’t engaged up until that point,” she said. “With a new council, the first thing that has to happen is to have that conversation with Calgarians now, if in fact the Flames ever come back to the table.”

But she added she takes the Flames at their word that talks are truly over.