Image courtesy of COTB
The proposed indoor facility has been put on the backburner.
Without debate Monday night, City Council voted 7-5 to confirm their earlier decision to not award the tender to the Tom Jones Corporation, who put in a bid of $37,394,000.
The corporation was one of four companies to put forward a bid for the facility, which lost out on funding for the Invest in Canada Infrastructure Program last week.
The original funding from the city for the facility was pegged between $30 million to $40 million, but council heard earlier this month that that the number had ballooned to $46 million dollars, which includes $8.8 million in interest payments on a $16.6 million dollar debenture.
Breaking Down the Funds
- Approximately $8.8 million in interest payments on a $16.6 million dollar debenture
- Just over $15 million from a dedicated reserve fund
- $1.6 million in MAT tax revenues
- $3.3 million from the Renew Thunder Bay Reserve Fund
- $300,000 from FedNor
Local groups weighed in on the March 8th decision with the President of Soccer Northwest maintaining that this project, which is seven years in the making and counting, isn’t dead in the water.
With tonight’s decision, City Clerk Krista Power indicates that administration will re-introduce the project at a later time.
“Council approved, in principle, a multi-use indoor facility located at Chapples Park on July 22, 2019 which included pre-construction site engineering and applications for funding,” Power indicated. “This was as the result of the presentation of Report 86/2019 at Committee of the Whole. It is this decision that made this project at this location be included in the city’s infrastructure priority list. Further decisions confirm this direction such as Report 150/2019 that awarded the design contract to Stantec on November 4, 2019.”
The search for a new facility was spurred on following the collapse of the Sportsdome on the CLE Grounds in a November 2016 snowstorm.
It threw the soccer community into chaos since both men’s and women’s clubs were forced to cancel their seasons because there was no place to play.
