Arena can be built for $150M, Sudbury councillors say

Two Sudbury city councillors say a new community arena can be built for $150 million, not the $215 million contained in a staff report.

Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc said that's what he learned in recent talks with the firm that would build the facility, Ball/TESC Construction.

Leduc and Ward 5 Coun. Bob Kirwan will submit a motion at the July 12 city council meeting directing staff to pursue the arena at that price point.

“My hope is that introducing this new budget, that we’re going to get our seven strong councillors and mayor behind this supporting this so we can move forward and seeing this event centre being built," Leduc said.

"This is an economic development that’s badly needed and we need to move forward to today. Building costs don’t go down in the future -- they go up."

Gary Hauck, a Ball Construction Partner, said the goal is to find ways to reduce costs.

“The first thing we would look at is the overall building size that we have," Hauck said.

"The square footage kind of grew with the requirements to have a little bit more leg room in all of the seats. I think standard is 32 inches from the back of the riser to the next seat by the time you get your seat in and you have your legroom. So we're at 34 -- that was the request -- so it's an extra two inches on every tier that goes up."

The proposal also had bigger seats than normal, he said, another area where costs could be trimmed.

Support for the project has been close at city council in recent years, with Mayor Brian Bigger often casting the deciding vote. Last week, Bigger dropped his support for the project, citing the new cost estimate.

"I cannot support staff's recommendation to accept a cost of $215 million for a new event centre," Bigger said in a statement.

"Knowing that the St. Catharines Meridian Centre was constructed in 2014 for $54.7 million. I also cannot support staff's recommendation to take on an additional $115 million of debt for this project. Particularly, with staff's latest estimate that the interest rate on new long-term debt would be five per cent or more."

Leduc said the original report said site preparation could begin in September, but should council decide to move forward with the amended resolution, staff would be required to report back at the beginning of 2023 pushing preparation to the spring.