A day after progress was made on the downtown arena negotiations, members of city council told CTV News a deal is likely, but council is waiting for Edmontonians to weigh in.
On Friday, council agreed to buy the land needed to build a new arena – days after the Katz Group dropped it's non-compete clause, removing two of three major obstacles standing in the way of a deal.
Councillor Kim Krushell supports the idea of a new downtown arena, partially because she believes downtown needs revitalization, but also because funding won't just come from taxpayers.
"Using existing monies that have traditionally gone to operations of the Oilers, putting that into capitol," Krushell said. "Now it's a ticket surcharge that Katz couldn't have without us in agreement,
"So it's our contribution but it's not new tax dollars."
However close the deal is to being done, council won't move any further until they've heard from the citizens.
"If citizens on both sides are going to be coming to council on Tuesday and they're going to make their voices heard," Krushell said. "So it's going to be very interesting [to see] whose voice is heard louder."
"The choices that we will have to make next will start to commit us," Councillor Ben Henderson said. "Not necessarily to doing the deal but to spending money that we wouldn't get back again."
The city will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, October 25.
Residents interested in participating can register on Tuesday morning, and will have five minutes to voice their opinions.
The arena deal will be back before council on October 26.
With files from Amanda Anderson
