The arena makeover will offer superior loading capabilities, enhanced seating, eateries along York and more appropriate quarters for performers, as opposed to locker rooms.

“While live music is very important, we also plan on having strong activation of sports tenants, obviously the Toronto Rock.”

The OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs relocated to Brantford, expecting FirstOntario to be unavailable to them this season based on previous construction forecasts. The Bulldogs expect to play at least three seasons there.

The Hamilton Honey Badgers basketball team, meanwhile, has moved permanently to Brampton.

Nonetheless, with OVG-city negotiations dragging on, the arena builder and partner HUPEG opted to accommodate November’s Grey Cup festival at the arena.

They also invited the Bulldogs back for the 2023-24 season, but owner Michael Andlauer declined, citing the tight turnaround with junior hockey action underway this fall, HUPEG president PJ Mercanti said.

The Rock, however, had more runway with a later winter start to their National Lacrosse League season, Mercanti noted.

“It was the circumstances of the timing of the lease negotiations that resulted in this. It wasn’t intentional, and we would have loved to accommodate the Bulldogs if we could have.”

Andlauer didn’t immediately respond to The Spectator’s request for comment Wednesday.

At city hall, Mayor Andrea Horwath called the OVG-HUPEG developments a “really exciting opportunity” to further downtown investment, which is key.

“We can be a bedroom community or we can be a thriving community with an active downtown.”

The updated arena deal dates to 2021, when council selected HUPEG to renovate and operate FirstOntario along with the municipally owned concert hall and convention centre through a long-term lease agreement.

The city expects that arrangement, which was firmed up this past November, to save taxpayers $155 million over 30 years by handing over operating and capital costs to the private consortium.

The arena project took a twist when HUPEG — which includes Mercanti’s Carmen’s Group, labour union LIUNA, Meridian Credit Union and Alinea Group Holdings led by developer Paul Paletta — recruited OVG to take on the big job.

That boosted an initially expected $50-million investment into FirstOntario to at least $100 million, Mercanti noted in an interview. (On Wednesday, Pistore said the final tally would end up being nearly three times that amount.)

“We knew that bringing OVG in was for the greatest good of the community, and the greatest good of the project,” Mercanti said.

But having OVG on board also meant a fresh round of negotiations with the city to update the lease agreement.

HUPEG wasn’t a party to those talks and was bound by a confidentiality clause, consortium member Louis Frapporti said.

That made it “very, very complicated to manage expectations” while HUPEG weathered public criticism over the uncertainty of the construction schedule, Frapporti said.

HUPEG is hashing out a separate “delta” agreement with the city that sees the local group assume a gap in responsibilities that OVG won’t.

OVG’s addition to the arena file presented a “more ambitious” plan and created another layer of complexity, Jason Thorne, general manager of planning and economic development, told The Spectator.

“It’s a lot of work and it’s complicated and it’s important. This is a multi-generational project, so you want to get it right.”

The various updated agreements are expected to be signed in the next couple of weeks, Thorne said.

Under its original master agreement, HUPEG committed to “ensure” the $50-million arena investment, $10 million worth of work at the convention centre and $2.5 million for the concert hall.

In exchange, the city is to transfer title of three municipal properties to HUPEG: the York Boulevard parkade, a parking lot behind it on Vine Street, and another parcel at York and Caroline.

Those properties figure into HUPEG’s more than $500-million residential development project, along with the “vibrant hub” for entertainment, Mercanti told council Wednesday.

For its part, OVG has built seven arenas around the world in the past three years, including the first carbon-neutral building in Seattle, where the NHL’s Kraken play, Pistore noted.

The firm recently finished a $220-million renovation of Baltimore’s arena and expects to soon complete a $665-million project in Manchester, he noted.

Pistore predicts Hamilton’s refurbished arena will rival the capacity and quality of Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, which seats nearly 19,000 for Leaf games.

While it’s a “wonderful venue,” Scotiabank hasn’t undergone a major renovation in quite some time, he said.

“So I might aspirationally say I think we’re going to be a more modern, better-looking venue by the time we’re open.”

OVG plans to host a news conference in October to share its latest renderings and plans with the public.

HUPEG, meanwhile, says it will soon launch a website sharing details of “The Commons,” which includes hopes for downtown “way-finding” and enhanced public spaces between the renovated entertainment venues.