Chatham-Kent is one step closer to getting a new multi-million dollar arena complex.
On Monday, council voted in favour of a motion that will get the ball rolling towards the first steps in the construction of a multi-use facility.
The motion, introduced by Councillor Brock McGregor, will have Chatham Memorial Arena and Erickson Arena replaced with an indoor multisport community centre with up to 4,000 seats in addition to a 200 seat twin pad complex. The motion also ensures that a maximum of $18.5 million of municipal funds is contributed to the project using municipal reserves or debt financing. It is also detailed in the motion that the project will only move forward if those funds are secured, along with a minimum of $46.6 million from government grants and private funding that will need to be contractually confirmed.
The motion approved is similar to what administration recently suggested in a report, but Monday's decision increases the maximum seat number by 1,800 seats and will allow an additional $1.3 million more municipal funds to be spent on the project.
When questioned about spending the money on other needs in the municipality, Chief Financial Officer Mike Turner explained that the money from the provincial or federal government, which will cover a large cost of the facility, will be funding that can only be used for municipal recreational projects.
"This one is specifically talking about cultural, community and recreational facilities," explained Turner. "We haven't seen the specific criteria but it is specific to those ones. This complex certainly fits under this criteria, we're fairly confident of that. If we were able to put in an application and get that funding, it would be specific to this project and we couldn't redirect it to roads or bridges."
The only immediate out of pocket funds will be $500,000 to $1 million towards work on the architectural study, which will start right away.
Turner said he believes the application process for upper-level government funding will begin within the year. However, he added that it could take several years before the money lands in the municipality's pocket. In the meantime, the municipality will maintain Memorial and Erickson arenas as they are. If the new complex is built, the two arenas will be closed, repurposed or demolished.
Turner also explained that there's seemingly a "now or never" approach to receive the government grants.
"There's about an eight-week application intake and about an eight-week turnaround after that. There's no indication that there's a phase two of it... I would say that if you don't put an application in you may certainly be limiting yourself," he said.
During the hour-long discussion, many councillors expressed concerns over the cost of the project and what would happen if the government funding was to fall through. Councillor Steve Pinsonneault was one of four councillors out of 17 who voted against the motion. The others to vote against were Michael Bondy, Doug Sulman and John Wright.
"Our next couple of budgets here in Chatham-Kent, with all these [provincial] cuts, are going to be challenging to say the least and there's only so much burden we can put on the tax base," said Pinsonneault. "This is another $18 million and I think people are finding it tough right now. I just think the timing is all wrong on this."
If the funding does fall through, the options would be to go back to the drawing board and consider the other arena strategies, such as renovating or maintaining them. Over the next 10 years, it would cost $2.8 million to keep both arenas operational. Upgrades for Memorial arena alone would cost an estimated $16 million.
Many of the councillors who were in favour of the motion said they believe the long-term benefit would be to build a new facility instead of continuing to pump money into the two current arenas that are at a point of despair. Councillor Brock McGregor echoed this and said that with the opportunity for government funding, now was the perfect time to act.
"It's responsible of us to try and leverage the money we know we're going to have to spend on repair and renovation, to look for something that's going to work better long-term for our community to try and leverage those municipal dollars into provincial and federal dollars and then look for community support," he said. "It really is about seizing the opportunity and what's fiscally responsible for the community and what's really going to be a great invest in something that's really a once in a generation opportunity."
The next steps in the process will be for administrative staff to look at potential locations and the architectural direction of the new building.