Memorial Centre - Alternative uses

[keoadmin]

Suggestions for and comments on proposals for the site

[keoadmin]

City urges new recreation complex

Printed from www.thewhig.com web site Monday, October 25, 2004 - © 2004 The Kingston Whig-Standard





By Ian Elliot

Monday, October 25, 2004 - 07:00

Local News - City staff are recommending building a new three- or four-pad arena – with a price tag of between $15 million and $25 million – to replace the city’s aging and increasingly decrepit community rinks.

The report, being presented to council tomorrow night,

also suggests the site of the Memorial Centre could be the home of such a recreational complex, which could be paid for through a public-private partnership.

The staff review of a consultants’ report on the future of community ice surfaces in the city makes 14 recommendations, chief among them that council should develop a multi-pad facility at a central location to replace the Memorial Centre, Cooks Brothers and Harold Harvey arenas.

Consultants have said that the Wally Elmer Arena has a few more years left in it and doesn’t need to be replaced as urgently as the others do.

Such a facility should be designed and built in tandem with a large-scale arena to replace the Memorial Centre, the report says.

The new multi-pad arena is needed in part, the report concludes, because ice time and facility rentals in a new Large Venue Entertainment Centre (LVEC) will be too expensive for many organizations in the city to afford and certainly more expensive than what it now costs to rent the Memorial Centre.

“With a business model emphasizing more large entertainment events and limited or no municipal subsidy, there is reason to believe that ice and space rentals will be less available and more costly than at present in the Memorial Centre,” says the report from Mark Fluhrer, the city’s manager of policy and support services.

The report indicates Fluhrer would be the project manager of the new multiplex.

Seventy-five per cent of the ice time at the Memorial Centre is used by youth and nonprofit community groups.

The report recommends that a new multiplex in the city should have one ice surface designed solely for leisure activities such as shinny and public skating, or that one end of one of the ice pads should be dedicated to such a use.

It doesn’t say where the facility, which could have either three or four ice pads, should be built but does make a strong case for considering the current Memorial Centre site.

“It is our expectation that the Memorial Centre site would be considered as a possible location for this community centre project,” the report concludes.

“Although the LVEC Task Force has suggested that council consider selling the Memorial Centre site [whole or in part] as one means of financing the new LVEC on the proposed Anglin Bay site, no council decision has been made on the Anglin Bay location or the fate of the Memorial Centre site.

“Therefore, it would seem reasonable to include the Memorial Centre site as part of this review process. This matter should be clarified at the outset to avoid misunderstandings later in the project development process.”

The cost of the multiplex is pegged at anywhere between $15 million and $25 million, depending on how well-appointed it is.

The study also recommends council withdraw its support for the idea of adding a second pad at the Centre 70 arena, saying the projected cost of $4.6 million might be better spent as part of the larger multiplex project.

“Time and circumstances seem to have overtaken the Centre 70 project,” the report reads.

“With the delay in the twinning project and the consequential advancement of the community arenas and LVEC as two of council’s top capital building priorities for 2005-2007, the Centre 70 twinning project appears to have lost much of its initial advantage.”

The report also recommends that a new arena complex should echo the Memorial Centre’s role as a monument to the country’s war dead.

“Design of the multiplex,” the tenth recommendation reads, “should incorporate aspects of the current Memorial Centre, perhaps including some of the physical elements to provide continuity between the new facility and a facility that was in part constructed as a war memorial.”

A mayor’s task force recommended that the Memorial Centre be sold to developers for $5 million to offset the cost of the LVEC, a suggestion that has drawn fire from veterans, neighbours and others in the city.

One unexpected cost in decommissioning the community arenas is that a number of projects to improve the older rinks received provincial funding worth more than $325,000, and if the city were to close or sell the facilities, that money would have to be repaid.

When it comes to paying for such a recreation complex, the report is silent, saying that the issue needs to be studied but that a partnership with the private sector is a possibility.

Rick Downes, one of the most outspoken opponents of the LVEC proposal on council, said the recommendation that council look at partnerships with the private sector to build community ice pads was a distressing signal about the philosophy of council.

“This is all part and parcel of the current attitude of this council,” he said, saying that community rinks should be publicly built and owned, with the private sector free to build and offer ice time for adult players if it chooses.

“My view all along is that recreational facilities for our youth should be publicly owned. To do anything else is a recipe for disaster for our future generations.”

The report also recommends that council nominate a steering committee to oversee the project and begin consultation both with the public and with groups who would use such a facility.

The report’s recommendations will be debated tomorrow.
ID- 84033

[fsrvival]

Hi,

BTW, we have the full text of that report on our website, here:

http://www.kcal.ca/04-404CommunityArenasReportFinal.htm

Lance Thurston gave us a copy of that report, - thereby allowing us to scoop the Whig - on Oct 22.

There will be details on that page that are not available in the Whig article.

One of our members said that she felt that this report was a declaration of war against the LVEC proposal. Oh, I hope so!

[nstn]

It will be interesting to watch how this committee proceeds with its work. I suspect that a long over due renewal of the Memorial Centre will not come out as a recommnedation of this committee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Corporation of the City of Kingston

For Immediate Release
Nov. 19, 2004, 4:00 p.m.

For further information contact:
Mark Fluhrer, Manager, Policy and Support Services, Department of Community, Services, 546-4291 ext. 1342

Multi-plex Steering Committee Holds First Meeting Nov. 22
Steering Committee For Multi-plex Community Centre Project

The first meeting of the Multi-plex Community Centre Steering Committee will be held this Monday, November 22, in the John Counter Room at Kingston City Hall. The meeting will get underway at 5:00 p.m.

At the October 26, 2004, meeting of city council, it was resolved that "a community centre project steering committee be established to develop, recommend and then oversee the implementation of a detailed work-plan for the planning, site selection and construction of a community centre that will include 4 ice pads, ancillary community space and possibly other complementary uses, either now or in the future, as may be determined by Council."

Members of the steering committee are Deputy Mayor Leonore Foster, Councillor George Stoparczyk, Councillor Kevin George, Councillor Floyd Patterson and Councillor Sara Meers.

The term of the Steering Committee will end upon the start-up and commissioning a new community centre. It's expected that the construction of a new community centre will commence mid 2006 with a anticipated completion date early in 2007 or 2008.

Monday's meeting is open to the public.

- 30 -