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Post by Max on May 23, 2008 20:15:44 GMT -3
City unveils $145-million legacy
Posted By Denis St. Pierre
Updated 9 hours ago
As new details of Greater Sudbury's so-called legacy projects were unveiled Thursday, it was difficult to determine the more spectacular sight.
Many of the 200-plus citizens on hand were overwhelmed by a series of artists' renderings of magnificent, state-of-the-art facilities - a huge, multi-use recreation complex and an 1,800-seat performing arts centre.
Others were floored by the revised cost estimates to develop the two projects - a whopping $145 million, possibly more.
"I'm not convinced this will be viable," university professor David Lesbarreres said as he surveyed the impressive design for a $70-million, 85,000-square-foot performing arts centre.
"I think it will be difficult to make it feasible, financially," Lesbarreres said. "And it may be difficult to convince people that it will be a success."
The proposed recreation complex, even with a pricetag in the $75-million range, is probably an easier sell to the public because it has wide appeal, Lesbarreres speculated.
Azilda resident Cathy Castanza couldn't agree more.
"So many other cities have this kind of facility; there's no reason why we can't do it here," Castanza said of the recreation complex, which would feature four ice pads, soccer fields, a leisure pool, walking trails and several other amenities.
"We need this. We need this for our children and our families. And where they're putting it is the best place in the city, because it's central for the whole city."
New design features and cost estimates for the legacy projects were unveiled Thursday during an open house at Tom Davies Square, hosted by the city and the two citizen advisory panels that have been working on the proposals.
Total costs for the two facilities have increased steadily since initial estimates were released last year, pegging the overall pricetag in the $60-million to $90-million range. Earlier this year the estimates escalated to the $130-million to $135-million range.
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Post by Max on May 23, 2008 20:18:16 GMT -3
Legacy of accomplishment or legacy of debt?
Date Published | May 23, 2008
A performing arts centre will make Greater Sudbury the destination to visit in northern Ontario, said the presenters at Tom Davies Square Thursday night.
BY BILL BRADLEY
What will be the legacy of the sports and recreation facility and the performing arts centre - unparalleled civic accomplishment or crushing debt?
Thursday night the tone was upbeat as the chairs of the panels of citizens promoting a multi-use recreational complex and a performing arts centre made their pitches to several hundred city residents at Tom Davies Square.
“Our vision has developed out of your needs,” said Darren Stinson, co-chair of the multi-use recreational complex advisory panel.
The complex, to be sited on 127 acres of city-owned land at the corner of Frood Road and the Lasalle extension, will cost $70 million, with additional costs associated with developing the land.
The facility is desperately needed, said Stinson.
The reasons for the need:
- average prime time ice utilization for all municipal arenas stands at 91.1 per cent with many facilities operating at near capacity;
- the city requires 20 additional playfields;
- the city lacks a tournament and special events centre; and
- municipal arenas are, on average, 37 years old.
The proposal includes the following:
- three NHL ice pads;
- one NHL signature rink with a seating capacity of 1,200 and an indoor walking track;
- an indoor leisure pool;
- four multi-use, lit playfields;
- an air-supported dome; and
- four kilometres of outdoor walking and biking trails.
The second part of the legacy project is the performing arts centre and an adjacent arts district.
“This $50-million centre will be an economic driver for the whole city, not just for the downtown,” said Diane Salo, chair of the panel. An estimated $10 million would be needed in soft costs to develop the centre, with another $10 million for an associated arts centre.”
The complex is to be sited downtown, across from the Sudbury Arena and behind the Sudbury Theatre Centre.
The reasons for building the complex are:
- the complex and arts district are vital to attracting the desperately needed professionals, whether mining engineers and entrepreneurs or medical personnel, said Salo;
- the performing arts centre and related arts district will foster a culture of creativity within Greater Sudbury, much as Science North has for the sciences;
- it will open up new opportunities for touring shows that other similar sized communities, like Thunder Bay and North Bay, capitalize on in their arts centres; and
- it will solidify Greater Sudbury's designation as a destination of choice within northern Ontario, as the Science Centre has, said Salo.
The proposal includes:
- a state-of-the-art, 1,800 seat, 65,000 square foot, performing arts centre;
- one main hall and one secondary hall;
- large outer lobby ideal for trade shows and other revenue-generating devices, said Salo;
- an adjacent arts district with diverse types of use.
However, the people who really need to be convinced were absent for the presentations. They are people like George Blanchard, 60, a 12-year resident of Dean Street in Gatchell. Blanchard is well-known in his neighbourhood.
“I think all the councillors and the mayor are off in dreamland to spend $140 million when we have roads that are in terrible shape, old people with no place to live, and not enough palliative care for those who need it. After all, these are the people who built this area,” said Blanchard.
For his part, Mayor John Rodriguez said, in 1909 Sudbury built a 2,000 seat opera house when the population only numbered 4,000.
“I also heard that roads were more important than building the Howard Armstrong Centre in Hanmer. Today it is packed,” said Rodriguez.
The mayor and both panel chairs said they were actively courting senior levels of government and the private sector for support for the estimated $140-million cost
of both projects.
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Post by Max on Jun 7, 2008 17:23:36 GMT -3
ACCENT: Funding the Legacy Projects: Where will we find the money? (comment on this story)
Posted By DENIS ST. PIERRE
Updated 5 hours ago
For months, Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez has maintained the provincial and federal governments must be significant funding partners for the city's so-called legacy projects.
It's likely safe to assume "significant" would translate into tens of millions of dollars, given total costs in the $140-million to $150-million range for the proposed projects -- a huge recreation complex and a performing arts centre.
In fact, the mayor suggests senior levels of government,
combined with generous support from the private sector, must cover the lion's share of the legacy projects' costs -- as much as 80 to 90 per cent.
The city has yet to quantify how much provincial and federal funding it needs for the legacy projects. It is expected to take several weeks or even a few months for those numbers to surface. But securing major financing from outside sources will be a key factor -- and possibly the defining issue -- determining the projects' fate.
So what can the city expect in terms of provincial and federal support? Is it realistic to count on tens of millions from Ottawa and Queen's Park?
Recent experiences of other Ontario municipalities that have developed recreation and culture facilities suggest Greater Sudbury may get nothing at all. At the other end of the spectrum, a best-case scenario would appear to be one-third of total costs funded by senior levels of government.
For the most part, there appears to have been relatively little funding from provincial and federal coffers for major culture and sports complexes developed by municipalities recently, research suggests. In fact, in several cases, there has been no such funding at all, leaving municipalities to finance their projects entirely from the local property tax base and community fundraising.
The Sudbury Star took a look this week at 10 municipalities that have built either a major recreation complex or a performing arts centre in the last five or six years. In six of those cases, there was no provincial or federal funding, while two municipalities received what could be characterized as minimal help. Two other municipalities managed to secure what could be described as significant funding from senior government levels.
When the City of Brampton built its Rose Theatre, an 880-seat performing arts centre that opened in 2006 at a reported cost of $55 million, it was shut out in its requests for federal and provincial assistance.
"There was a lobbying campaign with the province at the time ... as well as with the federal government for funding for the theatre," says Gordon Smith, Brampton's communications manager.
"That was, unfortunately, unsuccessful."
The Town of Richmond Hill has fared only moderately better in seeking help to develop its $30-million performing arts centre, which is scheduled to open this fall.
"We got $2 million from a federal grant," says David Dexter, Richmond Hill's director of financial services. "That's the only grant we've received so far."
While more funding "opportunities" are being sought, municipal officials don't appear to be holding their collective breath for senior government partners to come to the table.
"Nothing right now is on our plate," Dexter says.
As a result, the municipality expects to finance more than 75 per cent of the project's cost -- about $23 million -- from its own coffers.
In addition to the $2-million federal grant already provided, "another $5 million is to come from corporate and personal donations" and any additional government funding, says Dexter.
Only one of the four performing arts centres reviewed by The Star -- Toronto's Four Seasons Centre -- received funding from both senior levels of government.
A survey of six municipalities which recently developed major recreation complexes found that only one community -- Sault Ste. Marie -- received provincial or federal funding. The other five municipalities were left to their own devices to finance recreation projects ranging in cost from $16 million to $39 million.
This rather uninspiring record of senior government support for culture and recreation projects appears
unlikely to change, given current fiscal and political realities at Queen's Park and in Ottawa. Both levels of government are in belt-tightening mode, particularly the provincial Liberals who face a revenue crunch due to a slumping economy bordering on recession.
None of which deters Greater Sudbury's mayor, however.
Federal and provincial funding for the city's legacy projects will and must be available, Rodriguez says.
"I have to take the federal government at its word, that it is interested in cultural diversification and enhancement. They've said that," the mayor says.
"I'm going to hold the federal government to its word and to its commitment and I'm going to try to drag the provincial government, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, because this is where it's at."
It cannot be lost on the senior levels of government that there are important distinctions and unique circumstances to be acknowledged in evaluating the merits of funding community projects in any municipality, the mayor suggests.
Rodriguez has argued since he campaigned for office in 2006 that the city needs a greater share of the mining-generated tax wealth received almost entirely by the provincial and federal governments. It also is a fact that Northern Ontario municipalities have not enjoyed the same level of assessment and revenue growth as their southern Ontario counterparts for the last several years.
Such factors may help explain why the City of Sault Ste. Marie received $4.7 million from the province and $3.7 million in federal funds to help build the Steelback Centre, its major-venue arena and entertainment complex. Combined, the provincial and federal funds represented one-third of the project's $25-million cost.
Rodriguez also notes generous allowances were made recently by the senior levels of government in southern Ontario, specifically Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Home to the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada, the $186-million Four Seasons Centre opened in June 2006, with federal and provincial support accounting for 35 per cent of the cost, or a total of $66 million. The federal government donated $25 million and the province contributed $10 million in cash and land valued at $31 million.
The funding levels for the Steelback Centre and the Four Seasons Centre, extrapolated to reflect the cost of Greater Sudbury's legacy projects, would translate into roughly $50 million for the two local facilities.
Such a figure likely would make Rodriguez salivate, given that he also expects huge support from the private sector, in particular two local mining giants that have been enjoying unprecedented profits.
Rodriguez has yet to publicly provide numbers on the level of generosity he would like to see from the likes of Vale Inco and Xstrata Nickel. But the mayor has said that executives of the mining companies have not been scared off by ballpark numbers he has broached in private discussions.
The city also will be pursuing donations from the "broad" private sector, including corporations outside the city as well as various endowment funds and foundations, Rodriguez says. A community fundraising campaign also will be part of the city's approach, the goal of which will be to minimize the municipality's share of the legacy projects' costs, he says.
"We're going to the private sector -- and I use the term broadly ... We intend to go far and wide to see how much we can raise."
One approach the city will not take is to sell the municipality's electrical utility -- Greater Sudbury Utilities -- to help finance the legacy projects, Rodriguez insists.
There has been speculation recently within and outside city hall that council could be compelled to consider selling the GSU, which could fetch an estimated $70-million to $100-million, according to sources.
That is precisely the course taken by a number of Ontario municipalities over the last several years to help finance major community projects and services.
Brampton, for example, sold its municipal utility to Hydro One in 2002, for about $260 million. About $41 million of that money subsequently was invested into the city's new performing arts centre.
"That money was put into a number of funds, one of which was a specific legacy fund, to be held in perpetuity, like an endowment from which we get interest," says Gordon Smith, the City of Brampton spokesman.
"Other (funds) were specifically for community investments, for projects like the Rose Theatre."
Similar decisions made by Richmond Hill and the City of Burlington have helped finance their respective performing arts centre developments.
Greater Sudbury, however, will not divest itself of its municipal utility, Rodriguez says.
The GSU currently generates an annual dividend of about $3.8 million to the city's coffers, the mayor points out. City officials also have long argued the GSU provides better service and lower rates than Hydro One, which would be the likely buyer if the municipal utility was sold.
"I can assure you, that's not in the cards," Rodriguez says. "Because our utility is an investment of the city ... and we get dividends ... that come every year.
"We want to hold onto our utility, because our utility has subsidiaries as well. We think they're generating about seven-per-cent return on our investment and we can't get a seven-per-cent return on investment with investing institutions. So we're not going to do that.
"We are going to go after what is in the private sector and what's there at the federal level and at the provincial level."
Another financing option that remains on the table is the potential for public-private partnerships -- so-called 3Ps -- in which a facility is financed, developed and operated by a corporation under agreement with the municipality.
"Various configurations of 3Ps are being considered as part of the final development of business plans," the mayor's office said in a statement this week.
Such agreements have been used by several municipalities, particularly to build and operated recreation complexes and those arrangements were reviewed by advisory panels working on Sudbury's legacy projects, the mayor's office noted.
"Some were design/finance/build/operate, some were finance and leaseback, others were just design/build ... These options are being explored and the mayor is encouraging that all options be examined."
City council is expected to make a decision this fall on the legacy projects. Detailed funding applications to the senior levels of government must be ready before then, the mayor says.
Until such details are known, it is premature to speculate on the likelihood of provincial funding -- let alone the amount -- for either project, says Sudbury MPP and cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci.
"I don't know which ministry they're applying to and they haven't contacted me," says Bartolucci. "And I can't speak for other ministries, that's where I'm caught, so honestly I don't know ... what the city is asking for. But I do know that there are so many unanswered questions that need to be answered before these projects move forward."
Nor can he personally support either of the projects before crucial issues such as capital and operating costs, overall funding arrangements and long-term viability are addressed, Bartolucci adds.
"I'm not interested in a legacy that turns out to be a burden to our community," he says. "We have to be clear on what exactly this community stands to inherit.
"So I am not sold on these projects at this point in time. They may convince me, but ... overwhelmingly, the feedback I'm getting from the people I'm in touch with is that they have many questions about these projects."
Until his concerns and those of many of his constituents regarding the legacy projects are addressed, his funding priorities for the community lie elsewhere, Bartolucci says.
"My purpose in advocacy over the last little while has been more money for roads, I'm pushing for the school of architecture, I'm pushing for a new courthouse. Those have a greater priority, for me personally, than these two projects."
Nor will he be swayed by confrontational or coercive arguments to lobby for provincial funding, Bartolucci says, responding to
Rodriguez's suggestion the province may have to be dragged to the table kicking and screaming.
"I would suggest that he not lay down the gauntlet," says Bartolucci. "I won't be coerced into doing something that's not in the best interest of my community. My political legacy, if you will, will be always acting in the best interests of the community, not to fulfil personal dreams."
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Post by HJ on Jul 24, 2008 0:01:21 GMT -3
Council busy hiring over summer - City Hall column by Denis St. Pierre
Long-promised auditor and fundraising consultant hired
Posted By DENIS ST. PIERRE
Updated 12 hours ago
Although neither has been announced publicly, city officials have made two important hiring decisions in recent weeks.
A selection committee consisting of council members and staff has settled on a preferred candidate to (finally) become the municipality's first auditor general, according to a usually reliable source at city hall.
The new auditor general is a woman recruited from southern Ontario and she could be on the job as early as next month, says the source.
The second hiring decision is the selection of a consultant whose task is to come up with a local fundraising plan for the so-called legacy projects -- the proposed multiuse recreation complex and performing arts centre. The consultant's report is to include a projection of how much money can be raised through fundraising, which will be a critical issue in any final decision on whether to proceed with either, or both, projects.
The hiring of an auditor general is long overdue; some would argue such a position should have been in place years ago. Even by city council's projections, the job was to have been filled last winter. However, months of delays ensued, somewhat overshadowing the fact it was this council that succeeded in overcoming significant bureaucratic resistance when it decided last year to hire an auditor.
The auditor will be independent of all city staff and will be directed by and report directly to council. The auditor will conduct value-for-money audits of city operations and assist council in its responsibility to ensure accountability for the annual expenditure of a half-billion dollars in public funds.
One might expect city officials would be keen on announcing a preferred candidate finally has been selected by the auditor hiring committee. Instead, politicians and senior bureaucrats at Tom Davies Square have so far stuck with a more familiar tact.
Rather than acknowledge -- or deny -- that the hiring committee has selected the aforementioned candidate, city officials are relying on semantics to avoid the question.
Calls to the offices of the mayor and the CAO last week and to hiring committee cochairman and Ward 5 Coun. Ron Dupuis on Tuesday were not returned. Instead, the city's oft-beleaguered public relations staff is directed to respond that "the hiring process" is not officially concluded and an auditor has not been officially hired. Presumably, that means the preferred candidate's selection has not been ratified by city council, although city officials won't say that's the case.
Meanwhile, the recent selection of a fundraising consultant for the $140-million legacy projects has not exactly been kept a secret by the city. The award of a $22,400 contract to local resident Daniel Gingras is noted on the city's website, albeit in a section that likely is obscure or inaccessible to many residents.
Gingras, an unsuccessful city council candidate in the 2003 election, was a key campaign worker for John Rodriguez during the latter's successful bid for mayor in 2006. Gingras headed fundraising efforts for the Rodriguez campaign.
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Until recently Gingras also was a member of the advisory panel, appointed by city council, to develop the $70- million plan to build a performing arts centre in downtown Sudbury. However, he has stepped down from the panel as a result of winning the fundraising contract from the city.
Gingras was one of only two bidders who responded to a request for proposals from the city to "prepare a capital planning and feasibility study" for the legacy projects. According to the city's website, Gingras was awarded a "phase one" contract for the fundraising plan.
The second phase of the plan -- details of which are not specified on the city's website -- is expected to provide a more valuable contract to the winning bidder. That assumption is based on the city's estimate that the entire, two-phase plan will cost about $200,000.
Although the phase one contract was awarded through a public tendering process, Gingras's selection nevertheless has raised eyebrows among some city hall insiders and outside observers.
Still, "he won the (fundraising) contract on the up-and-up," through an open tender process with no apparent favouritism, said a senior city source.
Gingras also has a sound track record in community fundraising. He was actively involved in successful initiatives that raised millions for College Boreal and particularly for the Heart and Soul Campaign for the local health-care sector.
The contract for a fundraising plan coincides with what some sources characterize as growing sentiment within city hall that available financing, particularly from senior levels of government and the private sector, will fall well short of the hopes and expectations of legacy project proponents.
The latest estimates suggest a combined pricetag of $140 million to $150 million to build the two facilities and their biggest booster -- Rodriguez -- has vowed those costs must be funded largely by outside sources.
City taxpayers should have to finance only a minor share of total costs -- as little as 10 or 20 per cent, the mayor has said. As a result, consultants may have to come up with a convincing plan for a fundraising campaign easily exceeding $100 million.
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