Since plans to build a new twin pad arena in Chatham-Kent have been put on hold for the foreseeable future, the municipality is getting a final look at what was spent in hopes of making the project a reality.
In late 2019, the municipality submitted an application to upper levels of government requesting $36.65 million through the Community, Culture and Recreation Funding stream to go towards a 2,200 seat, $60 million arena.
In order to secure the money, the application first had to be approved by the province, which would then pass it along to the federal government for approval. The project was only to move forward if government funding was secured, as per council’s request.
Around this time, council also approved a motion that requesting that administration provides quarterly updates on what had been spent on the plans to date.
However, in August 2020, it was revealed that Chatham-Kent's application was rejected by the provincial government.
Two months prior, municipal staff provided a report to council which showed that the costs incurred on the arena project up to that point were $313,799.
According to a new report coming to council on Monday, no additional expenses have been incurred and there are no funds currently committed to be spent.
Out of the $313,799 spent on the arena project, $61,957 went towards the architectural design, $7,618 on consulting services for the grant application and $244,224 on environmental testing around the Navistar property which was considered as a potential site but has since been purchased by local investors.
"The municipality had applied to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) for a grant to offset the environmental testing around the Navistar property which was considered as a potential site," the report stated. "Now that the property has sold to private local investors and the provincial [areana] grant was denied, and there is no immediate prospects of a municipal facility at the site, FCM has officially rejected the grant application."
According to the report, the municipality will write off the environmental testing and consulting service costs to 2021 operations. After writing off the $251,842, the remaining $61,957 will carry forward to a future arena project.
In December 2019 council approved the transfer of $18.5 million from several existing municipal reserves into the Multi-purpose Sports Complex Reserve to go towards the proposed arena project. However, after getting word that the application was rejected by the province, council approved staff recommendations to split up the $18.5 million from the Multi-Purpose Sports Complex reserve and reallocate $11.2 million of it to the Disaster Mitigation Reserve, $2.6 million to the Chatham Public Works Garage commitment and $4.6 million to the Backbone Fibre commitment.