A proposed Event Centre will come with a $109 million price tag, confirms the Phase 3 feasibility study.
An executive summary of the Phase 3 Final Report was recently obtained by tbnewswatch.com. That summary report will be included with the 250 page document when it's officially released to the public before Monday’s council meeting.
The report outlines that the proposed event centre’s guaranteed maximum price of construction and related contingencies is set at $101 million. Other capital costs, including the hydro substation relocation ($4.3 million), transit terminal relocation ($2.9 million), parking ($2 million), project contingency ($3 million) and utility relocation ($800,000) that aren't included in the guarantee brings the project’s price tag to $114 million.
The estimated price is then brought to its $109 million after deducting about $5 million in capital funding offsets.
The report adds that the net capital costs will be “...funded in conjunction with confirmation of Federal, Provincial and Private Sector,” which is said to be Phase 4 of the proposed project.
In terms of economic impact, a part of the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, its expected the construction phase of a new facility would provide $95 million in direct spending, and $173 million in total spending in Ontario.
Once construction, the report estimates a downtown event centre would add $13 million annually in direct new spending from “visitor spending.”
The executive summary also digs into the parking issues of the north core location. Prepared by BA group, a detailed parking and traffic report indicates that a total of 435 new city-owned public parking spaces are proposed within 800 metres, or a 13 minutes walk, of a new event centre.
NOTE TO READERS: This story updates an earlier version published before the Phase 3 report was obtained. Some of the comments below may refer to details in that previous story.
