A Chatham-Kent councillor is looking for more options when it comes to making an arena decision in the municipality.
At the next council meeting, Councillor Michael Bondy will introduce a motion that council direct administration to prepare applications for a no larger than 2,000 seat twin-pad arena and an application for retrofitting Memorial Arena into twin pad arena.
This comes after Chatham-Kent council approved a motion in May, that Chatham Memorial Arena and Erickson Arena be replaced with an indoor multisport community centre with up to 4,000 seats in addition to a 200 seat twin pad complex. Among other stipulations, the motion ensured that the project will only move forward if a minimum of $46.6 million from government grants is secured. Because the motion was approved, administrative staff was instructed to look at potential locations and the architectural direction of the new facility.
The provincial and federal government funding in question is through grant programs that can only be used for municipal recreational projects. As of May, it was believed the application process for upper-level government funding will begin within the year.
However, before the final vote takes place on building a 4,000 seat arena, Bondy is wanting to make sure all possible options are on the table for council to vote on and should they vote against building the 4,000 seat arena, there is a backup plan in place and a chance to still get funding.
"What this will allow for, if the big arena fails then any second later a councillor can bring a motion forward for a smaller size arena and that application will be prepared and ready," Bondy explained. "That will allow for all three options to be available for council on the night that we vote to go ahead with an arena plan. So we're not just stuck with one plan. I've been there before with the railway, the Capitol Theatre. It's either a yes or a no. This allows for options."
Bondy said for him, it's common sense to have more than one option. Now serving his third term on council, he also said he's no stranger to this kind of situation.
"I'm not siding with either of the options yet, I will obviously have to vote on it but at the moment I think it would be unfortunately typical that council be given one option and one option only and if we don't accept that option we lose the funding, it goes to another community, cry cry, cry. Then we end up doing things that we probably wouldn't do if we had another option," he said.
During original arena discussions, Bondy was an outspoken opponent of having to pay upwards of a million dollars for architectural design work before securing any government funding, arguing that the "cart was being put before the horse." However, municipal staff said in order to apply for upper-level government funding, projects had to have some sort of planning already in place.
According to Bondy, it was always his intention to bring forward a motion like this. Although he said there might be some "excitement" about getting government grants for the project, he believes such major decisions shouldn't be taken lightly and should be considered with the future in mind.
"It shouldn't be all that difficult, and if it is difficult then it's worth it," he said. "Were talking about a $75 million basically 60-year project. Memorial Arena has been around for over 70 years. So we'll have this thing, whatever this thing may be, for a couple of generations so let's do it right. Let's have all the options on the table."
Bondy himself was one of four councillors who voted against the original motion to go ahead with the getting the ball rolling on building the 4,000 seat arena. He also believes the public isn't fully behind the decision as well. As the owner of Bondy's Dry Cleaners, he said he has asked almost every customer that comes in what they think of the issue, with most of them against it.
"I don't feel that the public is supporting something that is frankly oversized. That's for a London and Windsor, we don't draw those numbers...I have had almost zero support for a 4,000 seat gigantic multiplex," he said.
Voting on Bondy's motion will take place at the council meeting on October 7. He said because the motion is just looking at options, he isn't expecting much pushback.
"I'm not asking for a decision, it's just a decision on options. So I hope I can make that clear...this is only asking for options," Bondy explained. "The real vote is going to be on what to do. This is just asking for three envelopes instead of one."