Rogers Place construction starts Monday

After years of wrangling behind closed doors and on the council chamber floor, construction on Edmontons new downtown arena finally starts Monday.

Crews will start preparing the site for construction which includes putting up fencing, placing trailers and taking out curbs, lighting and trees from the existing parking lot.

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Then they will begin digging up soil to build the underground parkade and install concrete piles, which should start by the weekend.

For the first two months, really, all youre going to see is a lot of trucks coming in, filling up with dirt and leaving, said Rick Daviss, the city of Edmontons executive director for the arena and entertainment district project.

Probably up to 300 trucks per day, thats over 100,000 cubic metres has to be removed from the site and it could be, during its peak, a truck every two minutes.

The arena, which will be called Rogers Place, is scheduled for completion in September 2016.

Daviss says people wont see steel coming up out of the site until this September.