Keeping a promise
or how an arena is won
The
Whig-Standard
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 - 07:00
Local News - The process that led to last
night’s crucial vote on a new arena for the city actually began on Sept. 23,
2003.
That was the day mayoral candidate Harvey Rosen pledged to have construction of
a new Memorial Centre under way before the next term of council ended if
Kingstonians made him their mayor.
The voters did.
And within a month of being elected to replace Isabel Turner, who was frequently
criticized for a go-slow style that seemed to accomplish little in the way of
civic projects, Rosen began the process to get a Large Venue Entertainment
Centre built in Kingston.
In mid-December, now-mayor Rosen appointed a five-member mayor’s task force that
was led by Councillor Leonore Foster. Its job was to make recommendations to
council about what sort of facility should be built, what it might cost and as
it turned out most crucially where in the city the arena and entertainment
centre should go.
The task force reported back in April 2004, recommending an 80,000-sq.-ft.
sports and entertainment centre on Anglin Bay, at a cost of $28.5 million.
The site was unexpected. And the recommendation was for not simply a hockey barn
by the highway, but a building that would be both a waterfront architectural
showpiece for the city and would begin the revitalizing of Kingston’s underused
Inner Harbour.
On June 15 of 2004, city council voted to move ahead on the project based on a
review committee affirming the conclusions of the previous task force report.
However, opposition to the choice of Anglin Bay surfaced immediately.
Many of the most vocal opponents lived in King’s Town District that surrounded
the proposed site.
Within days of the task force report, they raised their fears about increased
traffic and parked cars clogging their streets, and noise from construction and
events. They were also concerned about the loss of both the waterfront park in
the area and the fate of Metalcraft Marine, a boat-building business that the
city would have had to expropriate.
The citizens took many of their concerns to their district councillor, Rick
Downes, who gradually became one of the most outspoken critics of the arena
among the politicians around the council horseshoe.
By September, task force members were already warning that their initial
$28.5-million estimate for the cost of the building might have been too low.
That was the month the city hired Don Gedge as the project manager for the
proposed arena.
In January 2005, Gedge unveiled a concept plan showing the number of seats
reduced to 5,000 from 6,000, then four months later confirmed the task force’s
warning about costs. At that time, he said an arena could be built for $37.3
million, of which $16 million would be covered through city borrowing.
Jittery councillors vote 8-5 to tentatively approve the project the following
month, but added a motion to conduct a market study to prove that the concept
was viable.
By this time, not only was the Anglin Bay location drawing fire from council and
citizens, but the Memorial Centre had been dragged into the fray.
The original concept was to sell the site for development and use the money to
offset the cost of the new arena, but that plan was opposed by Williamsville
residents, veterans and others who wanted to keep the site in public hands in
perpetuity.
There were also those who urged that the new arena be built on that site, a
suggestion rejected by the task force which said it was too distant from
downtown to provide the necessary economic spinoffs.
There would also have been a legal battle with the board that runs the Kingston
Fall Fair. It has a longstanding agreement with the city that allows the fair
board to use the grounds for its annual exhibition, and it would have to be
compensated either with money or comparable land if the city tried to literally
sell the ground out from under it.
The fate of the Memorial Centre was kicked over to another committee that was
studying the future of the city’s smaller ice pads. Council did eventually pass
a motion guaranteeing the survival of the Memorial Centre grounds as a public
asset, although in what form is yet to be decided.
While a consultant hired by the city endorsed the business plan for the arena,
doubts about the inner harbour location kept growing. Eventually, they developed
to the point where a majority of councillors seemed ready to vote down the
entire project based on those concerns. Petitions bearing thousands of names of
citizens opposed to the Anglin Bay site flowed into City Hall. Outraged letters
filled the letters pages of The Whig-Standard.
The North Block site was offered last September in a last-minute attempt to
placate critics and get enough councillors on side to continue studying the
project which council voted to do by a razor-thin margin.
Concerns about its effect on traffic and parking remain, as do fears of
out-of-control costs and the downtown location. Downes argued unsuccessfully
that the matter should be put to a referendum.
Last night’s vote was the second crucial one on the project in a week. Last
week, council chose Olympia & York/SMG Canada, a management consortium, to
become the private operator for the arena.
The vote last night was to choose Ellis Don to build the arena, whose costs have
now risen to about $41.8 million as a result of changes to the proposal and
additional costs, such as providing municipal services to the site.