THUNDER BAY – A proposed multi-purpose indoor turf facility, demanded by numerous local sports organizations for a number of years, could take its first major concrete step toward reality next week.
After receiving a first report earlier this month, Thunder Bay city council is scheduled on Monday to vote on whether to support the project in-principle and to approve up to $3.6 million for engineering and design work that would advance the facility to be ready to be put out for tender.
Six councillors joined Mayor Bill Mauro for a one-hour non-business meeting on Thursday, held at the request of Mauro, to prepare for next week's decision.
“To keep it moving is pretty basic at this point,” Mauro said after the meeting. “We have to decide on a site. We have to decide on the building form, basically a hard built surfaced building versus a soft shell or bubble type building, and the size and the footprint.”
City administration is recommending the facility be located within Chapples Park, following a vision outlined in multiple long-term master plan documents to complement existing sports infrastructure in the area. The recommendation is to proceed with a conventional building structure, at a preliminary estimated cost of $30 million, rather than an air-supported dome.
Other possible locations identified by city administration include across from Delaney Arena and the Legion Track, as well as adjacent to the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium.
City asset management director Gerry Broere said, at the earliest, the project could be ready to be put out for tender early next year, with construction potentially starting in August 2020. The absolute earliest the facility could be operational would be late 2021, Broere added.
The demand for a new facility has heightened following the November 2016 collapse of the privately-owned Sports Dome. The former Confederation College bubble had been repurposed to have an artificial field surface, but it is believed to have reached the end of its life, leaving the Lakehead University Hangar as the lone remaining indoor turf facility.
The original report, presented on June 3, proposed a field size of 95 metres in length and 52 metres in width. Following concerns from user groups about the width of the pitch, Broere said it's possible to widen the field within the proposed footprint of the building by eliminating the mezzanine on one side, something that council can consider on Monday.
On Thursday, it became increasing apparent there is an appetite from some of the councillors in attendance for an indoor tennis facility to immediately be part of the project, rather than to be explored down the road as a potential future addition.
Officials with the Thunder Bay Community Tennis Centre have previously advocated for a six-court facility as a long-term solution to again have indoor courts in the city, after the only two indoor courts that had been inside the college bubble were removed.
Mauro, who insisted he wanted to accommodate the racquet sport, said his hope is that any decision on whether tennis will be included won’t delay the process for the entire project.
“We need a roofed building for tennis. I have no problem with that. I just don’t want that decision, there’s a whole larger process going on here,” Mauro said.
“We can still have that discussion. I’m happy to have that discussion partially on Monday night as long as we keep it moving. If we lose a period of time, you could lose a whole building season next year depending on how that unfolds and that’s not what we want.”
Broere said previous planning indicated that adding a four-court indoor tennis component would come with a price tag of $5.4 million.
“The addition of tennis, although it’s quite costly, doesn’t really change the magnitude of the project,” Broere said. “It’s just financial change.”
