THUNDER BAY — The Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board offered to partner with the city to develop a covered turf facility at St. Ignatius High School.
City councillors rejected the pitch behind closed doors earlier this year, when they reviewed several submissions from parties who responded to the city's request for proposals for an interim facility.
Details of the bids have not been made public until now.
Tbnewswatch has confirmed through several sources that the separate school board offered to host a domed structure, for community use, over the new artificial turf field and synthetic track at St. Ignatius.
The city would have been expected to pay the estimated $4.5 million construction cost.
Under a plan developed for the board by consulting engineers, the facility would have included washrooms and dressing rooms, and would have been attached directly to the school.
One of the sources familiar with the project said it would have been one of the biggest facilities of its kind in North America.
Although the proposal was in response to the city's request for partners interested in developing an interim facility, the school board envisaged this as a permanent structure.
It would have been reserved for school use weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., but kept available for community access at all other times.
In managing the operation, the board expected to rely on revenue from users such as soccer groups and others to generate enough funds to pay for maintenance.
The board was evidently surprised to be turned down by city council, as it viewed the proposal as a unique opportunity that would have allowed for multiple activities to take place under the dome simultaneously.
The school board declined a request for an interview about the project.
Councillor Andrew Foulds, whose ward includes St. Ignatius HS, also declined to speak with Tbnewswatch, citing confidentiality rules.
Soccer Northwest feels a school partnership is 'perfect'
Michael Veneziale, spokesperson for Soccer Northwest, sees the benefits in placing a community facility at the high school.
"One of the major difficulties with these types of facilities is to find somebody that can utilize it during the day, say 8:30 to 4:30. And that's why we originally thought one of the schools would be perfect to partner up with, because they could use it for school programming during the day, and community user groups in the evening," Veneziale told Tbnewswatch.
He said Soccer Northwest would have liked an opportunity to provide input to council on the merits of the plan and any of the others that were submitted.
"We were hoping to be included at some point in time with the RFPs to see our thought process on it, and we weren't. We had heard that there were a few options that we were really going to like, and then we were just essentially told that none of them were going forward for whatever reason."
Noting that Soccer Northwest would be the largest user group for a covered turf facility, Veneziale added "anytime you're making a decision to benefit the community, I would imagine you would want the community involved in it. But it was not in our hands. We had no control over it."
Last month, city council directed administration to commence work on planning for a permanent covered turf facility, and to report back by the beginning of June.
At the time, Mayor Bill Mauro questioned whether the city could afford to pay for a short-term facility costing in the millions of dollars, and still be able to foot the bill for an even more costly permanent structure.
Mauro said the instructions to administration didn't mean the city was closing the door on a near-term solution, and said it could still be possible "to find some capacity to help the soccer community and other users of indoor facilities in the near term."
Despite the turndown from the city, one source said that rather than shelving the St. Ignatius plan, the Catholic board could look at implementing it some other way in the future.
