No public money for big Surrey arena, mayor-elect McCallum says
Published 4:10 pm Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Surrey mayor-elect Doug McCallum says he wouldn’t spend public money to build a big new arena in the city, putting a large question mark on Brenda Locke’s vision for 10,000-seat City Centre Arena.
“We’re going to wait to see what it costs, first of all,” McCallum said on the campaign trail Sept. 21. “And if we were to ever build a big arena, a bigger arena, we will not use a penny of public money. It will have to be built privately if it’s ever built in the future, or at least as long as we’re in government.”
A month ago, Locke said Surrey’s plans to build a 10,000-seat, $360-million arena couldn’t be undone by results of the Oct. 17 civic election, lost to McCallum.
“There’s no going back on this project,” then-mayor Locke insisted Sept. 10 at an arena-groundbreaking event at King George Boulevard and 104 Avenue. “All of the contracts have been done and they’ve been signed and we are ready to go.… There’s nothing that the election will impede.”
The following week, McCallum said a Safe Surrey Coalition-led council would do “a forensic audit of all the land deals that this arena is based on. We’re going to wait and see on that.”
Demolition of an old Safeway store has begun on the proposed future site of City Centre Arena, conference centre, hotel, entertainment district and housing. As mayor, Locke’s plans were to build the project by 2030 with the Western Hockey League’s Vancouver Giants as anchor tenant, in a move from Langley Events Centre.
On Sept. 10, Locke said project partners would be involved in the arena project, but couldn’t or wouldn’t offer specifics. “There is going to be investors in all parts of what’s going to be happening here, including the hotel,” she said.
At a campaign stop in Newton, McCallum shared his vision for an expanded Bear Creek Stadium, a 2,200-seat grandstand opened at the park in 2024, to become a 10,000-seat facility.
“I had that built, and it currently has covered seats on one side,” McCallum said, “So, we’re looking at putting 3,500 on the other side which we can do very, very easily and with very little cost, and putting 2,000 on each end zone, too. That would create 10,000 (seats) with an arena that’s already built and being used.”
Asked about possible parking issues at Bear Creek Park, McCallum replied: “They have lots of parking there. The other thing is, we’re going to build SkyTrain down King George and the station will be right at Bear Creek, a huge benefit there.”