Oilers' Rogers Place should wow fans
/Terry Jones of The Edmonton Sun released a three-part look at Rogers Place Wednesday night, which, if you didn't know, is the new arena being built for the Oilers. It's slated to finish construction late in the summer of 2016, with it ready for training camp in 2016-17.
Here's one, here's another, and here's yet another.
We've heard bits and pieces of details along the way, but this arena should help provide a pretty incredible fan experience. Especially since the team has to be better by the time it opens in a few years.
Denver is generally believed to have the best scoreboard in the NHL today.
“It’s Denver plus,” said Bob Black, executive vice-president of Katz Group.
“The difference between this board and Denver is that this is a cube as opposed to the rectangle they have in Denver. This board is bigger than they have in Denver. And it’s about five times as big, in terms of video area, as the board they currently have at Rexall Place.
“Denver has high resolution for the sides but the image on the end is smaller and not high definition.”
Current seating at Rexall is 17-19 inches wide, whereas the new place will be 19-22 inches wide... which is fantastic, since you'll "have direct access to select content to potentially being able to order food and beverage to your seat.”
Why yes, I will have some more nachos, please.
Wifi. Calls. Tweeting. Texting. Updating your Facebook status. Taking selfies. All will be good.
“This building will be the most technologically enabled building in the NHL. We spent a tremendous amount of time looking at the design from a cell and wifi system."
The 'dressing room complex' will have a theatre - big enough for the whole team - to watch game tape.
Eight teams could be housed for an event like the WJC.
Bottom line?
“We recognized from the beginning that we had one chance to get this right. And for this building to be the catalyst for great things in our downtown it had to be a world-class facility. It had to be that postcard snapshot of the City of Edmonton.”