Rogers Place, a new 18,500-seat arena for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, opened Sept. 10 with an open house for more than 60,000 fans.
The Edmonton Journal’s David Staples provided an in-depth review of the arena’s design, including the iconic winter garden, a bridge that extends across the city’s main thoroughfare to connect the adjacent mixed-use development to the arena site.
Excerpted from the Edmonton Journal:
“Rogers Place is going to wow this city.”
“The new arena’s nicest aspect? The wide concourses and fine stadium bowl will be wildly popular, but for my money, the knockout punch is the grand foyer, the gigantic enclosed pedway formerly known as the Winter Garden, now branded as Ford Hall.”
“Of course, this entire part of the city was forever nowhere. It contained little but vast gravel parking lots intersected by the six grimy, busy and loud lanes of 104 Avenue. But the arena is now open, its entertainment district and plaza are being built, and the Winter Garden floats above that gritty traffic artery, uniting the north edge of the city to its central core, providing a warm, open place for people to congregate, and giving the arena its unique form.”