New All-Inclusive Club Coming To GM Place

Since I've never been to the Garage, I do wonder how this sort of news will be met, especially considering they are one of the few teams rising ticket prices next year:

The Vancouver Canucks are building a new all-inclusive club for next season in the upper deck at General Motors Place.

The redeveloped space in the southeast corner replaces a broadcast production area, which will be moved to the service level and upgraded with a new high-definition video control room, said Harvey Jones, vice president and general manager of arena operations.

The total cost to build the new club and control room and reconnect the improved broadcast facility is in the neighborhood of $8 million, Jones said.

The new club, on the facility’s 500 level, will accommodate 190 people and be marketed as a season ticket that includes food and nonalcoholic beverages, but the package price has not been determined, he said.

The all-inclusive club will have two levels. It’s modeled after the 126-seat Nortel Champions Club midlevel on the arena’s stage end, a premium space the team introduced a year ago. Those season tickets cost about $12,100 for the last regular season. The Canucks have sold out more than 260 consecutive games, Jones said.

Diana Murphy, a principal for Rossetti, the architect designing the upper-deck club, said the two-tiered space will have a suspended mezzanine level on top with seating for 35 to 40 people.

Underneath is a large premium lounge with bar stools and booths and funky, high-end finishes. "It’s very West Coast hip, but also a Canuck-reverent space," said Murphy, a British Columbia native who was on the ground floor for developing the 14-year-old arena.

"We’re sticking to the team branding, being very respectful of the Canucks and Vancouver and British Columbia," she said. "For food and beverage, there will be action cooking stations and white-glove service." Aramark is the arena’s food provider.

Rossetti is working with the Canucks to develop new video technology inside the club, with exclusive event-level camera angles showing the players as they leave the locker room and enter the ice, Murphy said.

The Canucks are talking to a few companies about buying naming rights to the club and the prospects look good for signing a deal by the time it opens in mid-September, Jones said.