We had a total of 13 events planned in our facilities between the flood and when the Stampede actually started [July 5]. Those event [planners] were all contacted — I spent my entire Friday watching the water rise and at the same time contacting all those clients to can- cel in advance. We had an international show coming to us. We were able to can- cel that in enough time by being aggres- sive enough and not waiting [until it was] too late in the process. They were actually able to save their event by taking it to another location. We have rescheduled a couple of the events and are working on a number of the others. This was such a large-scale event that everybody was understanding. Our primary convention center space
is the BMO Centre Stampede Park. That building was impacted. We will have the month of August when we will have to do things like replace carpet and refinish floor treatments and replace drywall up to certain heights, but otherwise, that building was predominantly unaf- fected. It received very little water. We had our luxury suites that are around our rodeo area
— the water just missed them by mere inches or else we would have lost that, which would have been huge. We did have another suite that was
completely demolished, and a team came in and redesigned it — rebuilt it in two weeks. We have another building that is about over 100,000 square feet of space on two floors. The lower level is inaccessible still, so it’s closed. We’ve lost that space. Our human resources building is currently not able to be occupied. So, we had to move them into some of our space in our convention center, and then the lowest level of our headquarters building is still not able to be occupied.
And then naturally the hockey arena [the Scotiabank Saddledome] that the Calgary Flames play out of
PCMA.ORG
is on our property as well, and it was damaged. We had to cancel all four of our major concerts [that were part of the Stampede activities] with Kiss, the Dixie Chicks, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Keith Urban. All four of those concerts needed to be canceled, as that building is not able to be occupied at this point. The infield track for the chuckwagon
‘Canceling the Stampede would have had a lot larger impact than not going ahead.’
races — we rebuilt that track two years ago. I believe it took us about three months to build that track. The animals need certain layers of gravel and rock and shale before the dirt — it’s really important to those thoroughbred horses. And, really, that was one of those break- ing moments of the flood as we were really watching the water come up and hoping that we would not lose the track, because it takes such a long time to rebuild it. We did lose the track at about 1:30 p.m. on Friday, which was a heartbreaking moment. That’s when you start ques- tioning what is going to hap- pen with the Stampede. We were able to rebuild that track in the slightly less than two weeks that we had — and from what we’re hear-
ing from the competitors, they’re abso- lutely loving that track. We had to strip it right down to bedrock and rebuild it. That was trucks going 24 hours a day, crews working 24 hours a day to rebuild that track in the amount of time they had. It’s just incredible, and we’ve had some great partners helping us through the process.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON There has been a lot of excitement. Our ticket sales for most of our ticketed events were all sold-out in advance. We are still facing some inclement weather, which has hurt our attendance numbers. We’re down — it’s hard to beat our numbers from last year, being that was our 100th anniversary. But even compared to 2011, we’re down, but very incrementally. And I would blame that
AUGUST 2013 PCMA CONVENE 17
not on the floods. I would blame that on the fact that it’s been raining every day. [That we pulled this off] is really the
power of people — in a difficult time, you really see what people are capable of. We as an organization are not-for- profit and heavily volunteer-based. We have somewhere in the vicinity of 4,000 volunteers that help us out during the Stampede, and it was a difficult time because the city, the downtown core, was a natural disaster zone. So, with a lockdown you had to clear security to come in, and we couldn’t have any of those volunteers come in to help us — nor did we want them to. We sent all of our volunteers out into the community to be in the emergency response centers and helping the citizens of Calgary get back into their homes. And that really needed to be the focus for Calgarians. Now we’re here and we’re having a celebration that is fantastic — a little moment for people to take their mind off of everything that is happening. The Calgary Stampede has upwards
of a $350-million economic impact on the city. We operate as a convention center on a year-round basis, and then we basically hold our own convention for 10 days. It’s our Stampede. And that economic impact is so important to so many citizens that canceling the Stam- pede would have had a lot larger impact than not going ahead. We really needed to find a way to make it happen.
. — As told to Michelle Russell
For more information:
calgarystampede.com
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