HUMBOLDT — Humboldt council voted to apply to the provincial and federal governments for a grant that would pay the majority of the costs for a $34.7 million Humboldt Broncos Tribute Centre if approved.
Yet a major concern brought up during the May 5 special council meeting was the city's ability to pay for the operating costs of the facility if it was built.
Current plans for the facility, designed by AODBT Architecture, include a NHL-sized rink, space for exhibits to honour the 2017-18 Humboldt Broncos, areas devoted to physical therapy and emotional well-being, and flex-use spaces for community gatherings. The facility would be attached to the existing Uniplex.
"I will say that although I've been with the city for a little over five years, it has only really come to my attention in a heightened sense in the last few months the shortage of ice time that we have here in the community," Joe Day, the city's manager, told council.
According to a report from council, minor hockey has been limiting ice time to its team and goes outside Humboldt around 20 per cent of the time, Skate Humboldt is unable to expand its programming, and adult rec hockey teams are being turned away due to lack of ice time.
If the application to the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program is successful, the federal and provincial governments would pay $25 million of the estimated $34.7 million cost. Of the remaining $9.7 million, $6.7 million is expected to come from fundraising, $1.2 million from city taxation sources, $1 million from partnership contributions and $800,000 from city reserves.
"There's been a very positive response to the very initial fundraising that's happened so far," Day said. "Again, we haven't publicly announced or kicked off any public fundraising, but through DCG [Philanthropic Services, the contractor organizing the fundraising effort], there's been a lot of positive responses and verbal indications that we should be able to proceed there."
Economic spin off
The city hired accounting firm MNP to do an economic impact study for the project.
"The economic spin off, council, through the analysis that MNP did is indicating that through the larger events that we would be able to host here in Humboldt – conventions, conferences, tournaments of different types of sporting activities – through that type of activity, we can expect that there's going to be a spin off of between $600,000 and $1.1 million in additional visitor spending in the community through services such as hotels, restaurants and those sorts of things that visitors partake in," Day said.
The city manager added the report also predicted $86,000 and $163,000 in new revenue annually to the province.
Operational costs
If built, the estimated cost to operate the new facility would be around $143,000 per year.
"There is the reality that most municipal run recreation facilities don't cover their full cost," Day told council.
If that cost was fully borne by Humboldt taxpayers, it would require a two per cent increase to the taxes levied by the city.
Coun. Roger Nordick told council he was concerned about the extra cost to taxpayers. He said that there's other costly projects the city will have to look at in the next few years, like a fire station expansion, a new police station and new city hall, as well as continuing to fix roads and upgrade infrastructure. In addition, there's been a lot of talk about the lack of seniors' housing, he said.
"The concept of the Tribute Centre is a great one, but I'm struggling with the timing of this," Nordick said. "We're faced with this ever increasing inflation that doesn't seem to be going away – or slowing down for that matter."
The councillor said he's not sure about the need for a second ice surface in town and wanted to see more information on that issue.
Michael Behiel, Humboldt's mayor, was also concerned about a possible tax increase, adding he'd ideally like input from the community.
Coun. Larry Jorgenson told council the operation costs wouldn't come into effect until the facility was built.
"There's a mine being built that's going to bring additional residents. We're going to grow our community, which means our tax base is going to grow," he said.
"Some of that two per cent may just happen. We're going to have increased tax revenue regardless, and one of the ways to speed it up is to add more facilities to our community and make it more attractive for people to want to move here."
Day added that more work could be done to reduce those operating costs, while Behiel suggested that some revenue could come from naming rights.
Coun. Rob Muench said the plans are not set in stone.
"What you see on the preliminary plans or concept plans are not necessarily what we're going to end up with, but just something that we can present for this application."
The councillor said the application is the draft of a plan that could be used for fundraising purposes and that if the grant was approved, it would further get the ball rolling in terms of support.
"We're hoping that positively this is going to get approved and if not, we're going to have to do some real soul searching."
Next steps
With council's support to move ahead with a grant application, Day said there's plenty of next steps to be done.
"I know that many people in the community are wondering when there might be some stakeholder engagement with their organizations, that's yet to come," he said. "After we get this application off, we certainly anticipate planning will begin in earnest to start reaching out to many of those potential users existing users that we have and potential new users of the facility."
The city manager said they need to further explore some agreements with some of our key partners, like neighbouring municipalities, the the Humboldt Broncos Hockey Club. The city also needs to confirm some of the support made by national corporations and philanthropic individuals.
If past announcements are any indication, an answer on whether or not the grant application was successful could come in four or five months.
