Former arena CEO criticizes funding plan for Saskatoon’s downtown entertainment district

Saskatoon’s Downtown Event and Entertainment District continues to generate plenty of debate, with the province recently pushing Ottawa to help fund the project and promising to match the federal contributions.

Ken Wood, the former CEO of SaskPlace and Credit Union Centre, joined The Evan Bray Show on Wednesday to share his concerns about the downtown arena project and its funding sources.

Read more:

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• Saskatoon City Council aims to improve safety through new transit bylaw

Listen to the full interview with Wood, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

EVAN BRAY: I remember back in the early stages, there was heavy community debate about building the centre, where it should go, those types of things. Do you think if we fast forward to 2026, the appetite in Saskatoon has changed in terms of centre downtown versus a centre outside of the city?

KEN WOOD: I can see a lot of benefits of a downtown location, but I certainly hear from the public a lot of concern about that in terms of traffic and parking, so it seems similar.

The one difference I notice is that back in the initiation of SaskPlace, there was tremendous excitement. The public was behind it. You were going from quite an old facility, a small facility, to something brand new. This one, the upgrade, the difference is not that significant. The payback is not there. There is no business case for it and there is no economic case for it.

On the business side, you own a facility now that is debt-free. It cost us $30 million back then, and we’ve not missed any events because of any perceived deficiencies in it right now.

If you look at the facility, there’s only two facilities in Canada not in non-NHL cities that are better than the SaskTel Centre. That would be Quebec City and Hamilton. Other than that, major cities like Victoria and Halifax don’t have arenas as good as SaskTel Centre. All those cities would love to have that facility, so we’re not missing events right now. That’s a bit of a myth. If I was going to the board of directors of a private corporation that owns SaskTel Centre and said, “Hey, we should move downtown,” I’d be left out of the boardroom. There just is no business case to pay for it.

I think part of what we hear from the city and from supporters is that moving it downtown attracts people downtown, which allows the city’s downtown to thrive, whether it’s other businesses, restaurants, those types of things.

WOOD: You’ve got to remember, SaskTel Centre and an arena downtown is closed for like 200 days of the year, and when it is in business, it’s in business for three or four hours in the evening.

I was looking at posts yesterday about Edmonton’s downtown, and they are complaining about issues and problems, the same as Saskatoon. The DEED there in Edmonton has not changed anything. An arena is, really, a luxury facility. Average ticket prices now are $200. Corporate suites are a major part of it. It’s a luxury facility, so I just don’t see what it’s going to do for social and safety issues downtown.

Let’s talk a little bit about funding, because that was the basis of the Facebook post that I saw you put out, and you’re not happy that the province is asking the feds to weigh in, and the province is willing to put some money towards this. Why?

WOOD: It’s going to be debt funding, so obviously long-term interest impacts, and they don’t receive any great benefit from this.

You know, 95 per cent to 98 per cent of the attendees at an arena event in Saskatoon come from within the province. It’s just displacement spending. If we were attracting tons of people from other provinces or something, maybe Saskatchewan would see some sort of lift in that regard.

You’re just moving a facility from one location to the other. The permanent staff stays the same. There’s no economic lift for Saskatchewan to pay for the big debt that they’re taking on. If you look at the amount of debt that they’d be taking on, approaching half a billion dollars or more, that’s very significant compared to our total debt. It’s a big lift in debt and a big interest-carrying charge.

Let’s accept for a second, Ken, that this is going ahead, because I feel like part of what you’re saying is that the business case isn’t there to finance a new arena downtown.

WOOD: I really don’t agree that it’s a given that it’s going ahead. One of the key things in this is the federal contribution, and for them, the precedent is very worrying, because if they were to contribute towards a professional arena – which they’ve said in the past they don’t want to get involved in, other cities have approached them on that – if they open that floodgate, then they’ve got a problem too.

Cities in Ontario and across the country would love to have new arenas, but you just can’t go down that path. The Carney government talks about spending money on nation-building projects. An arena is not a nation-building project. Largely, it’s an important business because you look at some of the major events such as concerts and major events. Where does the ticket money go? It goes down the road, out of the province and, quite often, out of the country. How is that nation building? You have to build your exports and your research and technology, that sort of thing. A new arena just isn’t that.

Does your attitude change if the city were able to secure a predominant amount of the funding for this project privately?

WOOD: We are really an outlier in that regard. We’re trying to build an NHL-type arena with virtually 100 per cent government financing. Do your research and tell me if you can find one example for me where that is done in Canada and the United States. Major arenas have at least 50 per cent from private investors, but that’s because you need a big-league tenant, and we just don’t have that.

Do you think the province should do its own independent decision-making research before they make the decision?

WOOD: They need sober second thought, a look at the reality of this project. It’s just not going to give you the lift that warrants the public investment.