At a Special Council meeting, Tuesday evening, the council received a report about Centennial Arena. The report, from Acting Director of Public Works, Bill Goulding, proposes shoring work “to mitigate the potential for collapse of the Centennial Arena” and a subsequent in-depth investigation.
Goulding’s report is drawn from a detailed report and proposals exceeding 100 pages, from Wood Research and Development Canada. WRD’s report was prepared after their site visit, Sept. 11. Observations on that inspection resulted in the facility being closed immediately.
The cost of the proposed shoring and investigative work is an upset limit of $218,906 plus applicable taxes. Additional site and monitoring costs are $60,000 and $50,000 respectively.
Providing an overview for council, Goulding said, “We have to have a better look at this in order to have a full opinion of how we could go about restoring this or whether it's worth actually doing that or not.”
Goulding has consulted with experts beyond WRD. “All indications at this point, from not only Wood Research and Development, but other professionals that I've been consulting with, are that this is a restorable facility.”
“It's worth at least gathering the information to make that determination before we essentially damn it to being decommissioned and demolished,” he said.
Inquiring about the recommended and required monitoring equipment, Councillor Merrill Seidel asked Goulding, “So you're saying that we have to put this monitoring into place before we will be allowed to go in to shore up the building as a safety precaution?”
Goulding responded, “We have a chicken and the egg problem with the building. We need to do work on the building and we know that it's got structural issues."
“So the idea is to coordinate with the engineers on-site as much as possible, under their guidance, to affect repairs in a way that is as safe as possible in order to make the site progressively safer as we work our way through it. And I don't think that there's any other way to do it unless we had that specialty advice in place.”
Acting Mayor Andrew Wannan asked, “Let's just start with the monitoring system and can you explain that further? It takes 10 hours to place. What does the monitoring system provide us?”
Goulding, “So in a very practical sense, it provides us with a consultant that's willing to advise us on the basis on which we can occupy a building. That's what it means to us in the end, that's the feature and benefit that we're looking for.”
“It senses movement in the structure and over a certain threshold, it will send a signal out to alert the monitoring personnel at WRD that there's movement in the structure. And then they would advise to accordingly, based on what they see with the monitors, either to get out of the building or just to advise us that there might be an issue in one particular place, or they can provide real-time consultancy based on feedback that they can see with these devices.”
Commenting about WRD, Goulding told the council, “They do work all over the world on wood structures. A lot of them are bridges. The proposal that they provided showed a lot of bridge installs of these monitoring devices where they're just used perpetually. That's not the intent with this installation. We're looking to have it for a while until we can stabilize the structure and then there wouldn't be a use for them thereafter.”
Goulding described the proposed inspection as very detailed. “My own comfort level for me to make recommendations to council, I want to see not only all the primary components but all the secondary wood purlins, everything so that we know what's going on with the structure as a whole”
Interior panels and insulation would be removed for a full inspection of the structure. “You don't want any part of a building to be compromised. So, removal of all of those interior finishes so that we can properly inspect and look at every piece of this building to know that it's serviceable and strong enough, I think is important, to know all of that information so that we can have an informed opinion on whether this is a restorable facility or not.”
Wannan tested, inquiring, “But you're basing the outlook on their preliminary reports saying that this is a salvageable building without nailing them down to it?”
Goulding described the dilemma: “Well it's difficult to nail anybody down to anything at this point because in order to definitively say, ‘Yes, we know this is good,’ you have to see all the parts and so we haven't been able to look at all the parts yet.”
Goulding continued, “The report you have in front of you for consideration today, gets us to the point with all the logistical steps so that we can see every piece of this building structurally to know that it's salvageable and serviceable. All indications thus far are that that is the case.”
Councillor Norman Mann: “Mr. Goulding's last comment is, I think the most important. We would essentially be paying the tendered price by the expert to get back into the building with no guarantees whatsoever of what we're going to find or the severity of it. So really we're back five years, are we going to fix the building or not?”
Mann concluded by asking, “Can we spend the money tonight? Do we start shovel-ready? I know that the mayor has been in touch with other levels of government already, and I know that discussions are taking place, but again, we need to be all on the same page of what we're going to do.”
Summarizing his objective to the council, Goulding said, “What I'm trying to do is put forward a solution for council's consideration where we get on the ice as soon as possible in a facility that's not just fixed, that implies it's going to be the same as it was before it broke. We're going to put a facility back that is serviceable for the long term.”
Councillor Charles Flintoff commented/asked, “So, this is basically step one that needs to be done to get to step two. Without doing this, we're not going to know exactly where we stand with the arena?”
Goulding: “That's exactly the way I see it.”
“We can't have an opinion on what we should do to fix this place or if we should fix this place until we take this first step,” he concluded.
Councillor Luc Morrissette said, “My gut feeling says, scrap the building, let's go and try to get a new one. I do understand that if we do all of this work, we'll have a better idea of what's going to happen. So maybe it is a good idea to do this.”
“I want this to figure it out now and do it properly. No more farting around. Excuse the wording. I think we need to move on this and make a proper decision for the people of Elliot Lake. They've waited long enough for this arena and we need to move on. There's families out there that need it,” Morrissette concluded.
Following some further discussion, Goulding said, “If we accept the figure that it's about a $20 million investment for a new arena, which we'll confirm, we're hoping to have that information, something suitable, not extravagant realizable by the city. That kind of investment, it exceeds all of our available reserves right now we would be borrowing to do so. And we have a list of capital projects that we will have to borrow to realize that involve providing things like roads and water to the constituents of this community.”
“And so, if we exhaust all of our available borrowing capacity or even a good portion of it, we need to figure all that out before we make those kind of decisions on an arena. We're making new problems for ourselves with other necessary amenities to this town.’
Wannan: “For myself, this kind of issue is a parallel to what I do every day. I ask people to spend money to find out information so I can make the best decision possible. It just happens to be for your pet. But this is just the same. We don't have enough information to make a decision one way or the other.”
“You boil it down, yes, the options are detonate and start a new one, or as Mr. Golding says, figure it out and mitigate. We can't predict the future. We can't guess with this. And we have to be very safe and concerned about not only the community but now going forward, the people that will be working in there.”
“I just really think it's prudent that we have to take these steps. Could you imagine if we can save this building and that we didn't do this? And can you imagine if we could save this building and spend the minimum amount of money just to get it for another five years? But what if we could double that amount of money and we get 15 years? The commitment for a new arena is definitely with all of us knowing what we know now, with our finances, our budgets, our projects that we think are coming up.”
“It's an awful lot of money. We can't depend on grants, loans that could be pixie dust for all we know. I have been in discussions with senior levels of government. There's no way that any of them will confirm funding for anything, just that it's out there and there's a potential.”
The council voted unanimously to proceed with the shoring and detailed investigation.