News on the Project

Well, there's been some big news in recent days. The Katz group finally released some info on their plans for the new arena. And there's a lot of controvery on who should be picking up the bill.

The plan itself involves a complete overhaul of a section of the downtown core, with the building of a new arena, practice facility, office towers, student housing, casino, and shops. The total bill for the whole area would run over a billion dollars.

Katz sees the city itself investing into the arena, and he claims be funding a portion of the surrounding development. Some critics say that Katz should fund the arena himself, and that his numbers don't add up. Meanwhile, others are praising him for his bold new vision of the downtown.

First Post

This is the first test post to see if the blog is working properly. Welcome to the JRSB 101 blog devoted to the ongoing discussion of whether or not a new arena and surrounding district should be built in Edmonton. There's certainly a lot of debate and information flying around about this in the local newspapers, so we thought it a timely topic for the blog project.