The city is looking for partners for a proposed $106-million event centre.
The city announced Friday that it has issued a request for expression of interest from potential business partners and investors. The request looks for third parties to potentially partner with the city in operation, programming or financing the facility.
This would include the spectator arena and convention centre and potentially other components including a restaurant and catering.
The request follows city council’s November decision that named a north core site the ideal location for a 5,700 proposed facility.
The site selection meant the city could move forward with Phase 3 of the project and start seeking funding from the federal and provincial governments.
The request also asks if third-party owners or investors want to occupy the facility as an anchor tenant.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is working with the city on the process.
“The RFEI will help the city gauge and potentially secure, private sector interest in the event centre, which will be an important piece of the puzzle for the project to proceed to a ‘project ready’ stage,” said Michael Smith, the city’s general manager of facilities, fleet and transit services, in a media release.
But City Manager Tim Commisso said that just because they’re looking for partners doesn’t mean the project is approved.
Commisso also pointed out that the request doesn’t mean the city has committed or is asking any possible investors or partners to commit to the project.
It’s just a process to get the project ready, he said.
“If we go the next step, which I suspect would be later in the fall, that’s when we’ll get more into the formal request for the proposal process,” he said.
“It’s one step before getting really an approval on this project. We’ll have a better handle on where we are. Right now, we’re working with FedNor for funding the Phase 3 feasibility. They have been quite positive.”
Commisso said they have already received a lot of informal interest and what the request does is put all those potential partners and investors on the same playing field. He mentioned that the city has been in talks with Lakehead University.
The city still hasn’t secured funding from both upper levels of government in order to proceed with the project. Commisso said knowing who will be partners on the project will help in securing that funding.
“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing,” he said.
“This project won’t proceed unless it is project ready. It won’t go ahead unless there’s funding in place to build it. The reason why there was such big support for the waterfront particularly at the federal level was because there was a private partner. I’m not suggesting that it is the same partner but it might be someone who might want to do a 25 to 30 year lease to manage and operate it.”
