UPDATE ON PHASE 2 FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR PROPOSED EVENT CENTRE
January 6, 2012 – The Phase 2 Feasibility Study for the proposed Thunder Bay Event Centre has officially started with a kick-off meeting Thursday and site tours today of the potential locations at the
Downtown/Waterfront, Thunder Bay Airport, and Innova Business Park sites.
Work will be ongoing from January to May when a final report will be presented to City Council. The consulting team will be responsible for reviewing the development opportunities for each of the three sites, assessing the economic impact, analyzing the traffic and parking issues, and developing an overall conceptual cost estimate for the development of the three sites.
An open house will be held on Feb. 29 to outline the work of the consulting team and will include concept designs for each of the three sites, as well as a general commentary on the economic impact, traffic issues, cost implications and site selection criteria.
Interested members of the public are encouraged to attend:
Open House & Public Information Session
Wednesday, Feb. 29
3 pm to 9 pm Open House
4 pm and 7 pm Presentation by Consulting Team
Italian Cultural Centre
132 Algoma St. South
A second open house will be held in early spring immediately following the presentation to City Council of the recommendation from the consulting team as to a preferred site. There will also be a more detailed concept design for that site, an economic impact assessment, a detailed traffic and parking assessment, and an order-of-cost-magnitude estimate for the overall project.
A final report will be presented to Council in May. For more information visit www.thunderbay.ca/eventcentre
Ron Biduka, Managing Director of the Consulting and Deals Practice with Price Waterhouse Coopers based in Toronto.
“ I have worked on $3 billion worth of projects starting with the City of Guelph with the Sleeman Centre as well as at Brampton, Ottawa, Kingston, St Catherines, London, Windsor, Owen Sound, Sault Ste Marie and in the US and western in Canada.”
“ We are going to create a business plan and do a site review to find out where the building will be best located. Several sites have been narrowed down to 3 here in Thunder Bay. We have been tasked to look at the three alternative sites and determine which would be a preferred site from a number of perspectives including site compatibility, the ability to maximize the square footage, the use of the site from an event centre perspective, looking at the range of revenues it could generate, the site access, parking and transportation perspective, the economic impact perspective as well as other things. From that we will choose the preferred site for council to decide upon. Some of our other work will be looking at how many jobs will it create, the level of use expected to give rise to and
what the net bottom line financial obligations it will be able support and where can money be found to finance the project.”
“ The newer buildings I have worked on have been able to provide positive cash flow and support a portion of some of their capital costs but they will require funds from the sale of naming rights and
other government funding levels. You are talking in the range of $50 to $60 million or more or about a $10,000 per seat cost for capital and the facility being able to generate a few hundred thousands of net income. The capital has to be in place so we have to figure out where the sources of funding could income from and how to leverage that to get the building built.There is a 50,000 sq feet conference centre to be part of the product. We will look at the range of meetings that could be attracted to the conference space. They generate other things like hotel nights.”
“ I?think the climate in 2012 is there to finance projects like this. I have clients in different markets like this that are all going ahead at this time so the market is there.”
Conrad Boychuk is president of CEI Architecture Venue development and is a architect. His specialty is spectator facilities and Conrad went to Hammarskjold High School.
“ We will have a process that engages the public with the first information session being on Wednesday, February 29 at the Italian Cultural Centre. We will show the community what the facilities will look like on the final three various sites. The downtown location will be a good exercise to see how much we can fit on that site. We want to find the sweet spot economically for the best size of the facility. In this instance we are working with the financial consultant to see what size is best.”
“ This will be a great experience for me personally as I started as a kid in grade 10 with a school project redesigning the face of the Fort William Gardens. Now with over 30 years experience in this area it will be satisfying bringing the project to a community that really needs it. I look forward to helping the community find it’s way through this process.”
