No public money for big Surrey arena, mayor-elect McCallum says<\/p>\n
Published 4:10 pm Tuesday, October 20, 2026<\/p>\n
Surrey mayor-elect Doug McCallum says he wouldn\u2019t spend public money to build a big new arena in the city, putting a large question mark on Brenda Locke\u2019s vision for 10,000-seat City Centre Arena. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to wait to see what it costs, first of all,\u201d McCallum said on the campaign trail Sept. 21. \u201cAnd 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\u2019s ever built in the future, or at least as long as we\u2019re in government.\u201d<\/p>\n
A month ago, Locke said Surrey\u2019s plans to build a 10,000-seat, $360-million arena couldn\u2019t be undone by results of the Oct. 17 civic election, lost to McCallum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no going back on this project,\u201d then-mayor Locke insisted Sept. 10 at an arena-groundbreaking event at King George Boulevard and 104 Avenue. \u201cAll of the contracts have been done and they\u2019ve been signed and we are ready to go.\u2026 There\u2019s nothing that the election will impede.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following week, McCallum said a Safe Surrey Coalition-led council would do \u201ca forensic audit of all the land deals that this arena is based on. We\u2019re going to wait and see on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s plans were to build the project by 2030 with the Western Hockey League\u2019s Vancouver Giants as anchor tenant, in a move from Langley Events Centre.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 10, Locke said project partners would be involved in the arena project, but couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t offer specifics. \u201cThere is going to be investors in all parts of what\u2019s going to be happening here, including the hotel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had that built, and it currently has covered seats on one side,\u201d McCallum said, \u201cSo, we\u2019re 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\u2019s already built and being used.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about possible parking issues at Bear Creek Park, McCallum replied: \u201cThey have lots of parking there. The other thing is, we\u2019re going to build SkyTrain down King George and the station will be right at Bear Creek, a huge benefit there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No public money for big Surrey arena, mayor-elect McCallum says Published 4:10 pm Tuesday, October 20, 2026 Surrey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-940954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}