Skip to content

LETTER: Event centre would be nice federal budget prize

To the editor: March 22 is federal budget day. Hopefully, the long-awaited events centre will qualify for federal funding under the Liberal infrastructure spending plan. If the money is there, I expect things to move rapidly down at the waterfront.
384890_46266525

To the editor: 

March 22 is federal budget day. Hopefully, the long-awaited events centre will qualify for federal funding under the Liberal infrastructure spending plan.

If the money is there, I expect things to move rapidly down at the waterfront. City hall is ready.

No project in the history of Thunder Bay has been studied in as much detail as the event centre.

This process has been due diligence on steroids. There is no doubt we are going into this with eyes wide open. It is about time, the Fort William Gardens marked her 65th birthday last week, but nobody was there to celebrate.

The Gardens, being primarily a single use hockey rink, is a product of its time, and on most nights the place is dark. In contrast, the city expects the event centre (with 66,000 square feet of conference space) to be in use more than 200 days a year.

Many who opposed this new facility are of the older generation; most in favor were younger. For the record I am pushing 70, and the price tag seemed a lot for a pensioner.

To be frank, the cost gave me some serious second thoughts.

But at the end of the day, this facility isn’t really for old timers like me, it is for the next generation and the ones that follow. Further, we must not lose sight of the fact that this isn’t a sports palace for some NFL billionaire.

This is our house: built in Thunder Bay, for Thunder Bay. Some say we should wait until we land an AHL hockey team. I say, that the Lakehead Thunderwolves ownership has been rock solid since the day they created the team more than 15 years ago.

Significantly, in that time many AHL teams have changed cities. Last year alone a half dozen teams relocated.

As is often the case in the AHL, the parent team in the NHL calls the shots and local interests come second.

The Wolves provide great entertainment at an affordable price, and will pack the place. And so I am hopeful that the long wait will soon be over.

This city needs a win right now, and while an Events Centre won’t solve many of the serious problems we are dealing with, it will give us a place to meet and enjoy with friends, and a place we will all be proud of.

Ron Murray,
Thunder Bay

 





push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks