Planning for the fifth new arena fundraising dinner will continue over the summer, with the first details expected to be finalized in early September.The dinner committee met June 3 to set the wheels in motion for the final installment of the annual event."There will be a dinner," committee member Gary St. Onge said in an interview Monday. "It's just a question of whether it will be a thank-you dinner, or something like the ones before, or something in between."Barry Bridges has been assigned the task of speaking to supporters of dinners past to determine the direction of the event.Holding another large-scale event with an auction to make money for the arena, and having a break-even dinner with speakers to thank the business community are the leading options at this point, but St. Onge says the committee is open to the possibility that another, more popular option may arise.At the top of the priority list is nailing down a date. St. Onge says the dinner committee will be working with the building committee to make sure the dates for the dinner and grand opening celebrations don't clash, but added that the dinner committee will need to know its options relatively quickly."If you want to track down some of these guys you have to have a pretty specific time," said St. Onge. "It was like when we had Steve Yzerman this year, a lot of these guys are only available for a few months out of the year and it can get hard to get them, especially around playoff time."Last year's dinner featured appearances by Detroit Red Wings executives Ken Holland and Steve Yzerman, and Chris Getzlaf and Stu Foord of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
