If you haven’t strolled down by Stampede Park lately, or caught a glimpse just north of the Scotiabank Saddledome, you may have missed the building rising up to join Calgary’s downtown.

Scotia Place, Calgary’s new events centre, is a hive of activity – even in the cold – as the $1.25 billion arena project enjoyed its first full season of construction in 2025.

While there were some timeline slip-ups early in the project, it’s full steam ahead, as the project has gone from a 35-foot deep hole in the ground back in April, to having concrete forms and steel above the ground right now.

Bob Hunter, Scotia Place project lead, said that most of the big hole is filled now. All the footings and exterior foundation walls have been poured; as have the back-of-house area, the dressing rooms, all the way up to street level.

“Since October, the steel structures are in place, and on the south side, it’s quite high, almost to its final height,” he told LWC.

“They move in sections. The steel guys follow the concrete guys, and we’re going to be finishing the main level, street level concourse over the next couple of months.”

The target opening date is still set for the fall of 2027, and Hunter said that thus far all things point to a successful completion by that time. Today, there are ~330 workers on site. That will balloon to up to 1,200 once the building envelope is complete and work begins in earnest on the interior, Hunter said.

“We’ll then start to enclose it, so the exterior cladding that will obviously enclose the building that will start in the next, I would say, in the spring,” he said.

“We will furiously go around the building and enclose the building so that we can start finishing the interiors.”

Budget intact, upcoming milestones

The building is expected to seat around 18,500 for hockey games and up to 20,000 for concerts. While there’s always tweaking going on as the project advances, Hunter said that the planned front of house experience – the bowl area, the audio, the video – none of that has changed very much since the project was approved and ground broken in July 2024.

There’s work already happening on some areas of the concourse that are complete, according to Hunter. Mechanical and electrical infrastructure is being put in.

What Calgarians will continue to see is the steel going up, followed by the cladding, and then the roof structure. Then the steel studs and drywall for the interior can start to go in.

“We want to finish the steel. We want to finish the roof and get the whole thing sealed up so that we can do the, I’ll call it the softer work than we’re doing now,” he said.

“So, finishing restaurants, suites, seats, or and all that good stuff that you don’t want to get wet.”

When the project was first started, there were questions around the budget and controls in place to ensure costs didn’t spiral in the wake of ongoing US tariffs. Hunter said that a large portion of the project has already been tendered out and tariff protection was built into the tenders.

“The onus is on the supplier, potential supplier, to accommodate any potential tariffs that they might be levied on,” he said.

“We account for it in the budget. It’s there.”

As far as any potential hiccups that would prevent them from reaching some of the 2026 construction milestones, Hunter said they’re always reviewing potential project risks. There’s nothing they foresee that would significantly impact the timeline for next year.

“We review risks every month. We go through them, and we add them, or we take them off,” he said.

“I would say that there’s nothing that wouldn’t be considered…You’d almost have to be catastrophic… because of the control and discipline that goes into the building.”

Hunter said though they look at drawings and renderings of the new Scotia Place all the time, they shouldn’t be surprised by much as the building takes shape. But they often are.

“If you’re not on site for a few days or a week or so, when you come back, you really notice the changes, and positive changes,” he said.