It looks like a new arena may cost the City of Penticton a little more. Or a lot more if you’re not used to juggling the numbers governments and lottery winners play with.
This week Penticton city council voted to give up on a $6-million grant intended to help fund construction of a new arena to replace the aging Memorial and McLaren Arenas. The grant is contingent on having the rest of the estimated $34 million pulled together by March 31, 2019.
Obviously, there is no way the city can meet that date—a week away—even though the grant has been available for two years.
A new rink has been talked about for a number of years, practically since the two rinks at the South Okanagan Events Centre opened to the public in 2008. There is also no doubt that something needs to be done about the arena situation. There’s no lack of groups needing ice or dry floor time, and both McLaren and Memorial are feeling their age, at 48 and 68 years old, and are at the point where repairs are adding up to more than the cost of a replacement.
There are a number of reasons why more progress wasn’t made: the application for the $6-million grant was made early in the process and other funding to help defray the costs haven’t been obtained.
But local governments are also addicted to studies. It’s understandable since a mistake when you’re talking about a major facility could be very costly. In this case, there were at least two lengthy studies on the subject, one in 2016 and another in 2017 commissioned by the arena task force, plus work on the business case throughout 2018.
Those were preliminary studies about the need, cost estimates and possible solutions. Actual planning and design studies come later.
It’s not that the city hasn’t been working on getting there, but there is a point where words need to translate to actions a more quickly.