City making arena mistake after arena mistake BARRIE’S BEAT

Mr. Ken Doherty, city of Peterborough’s community service director’s latest revision of the time frame and solution to the apparent floor problem at the Memorial Centre, again shows the inadequate investigation and planning he and his department have done.

Since he dropped the edict that the Memorial Centre floor needed replacement on council and user groups more than a month ago, little but confusion, revisions, misunderstandings, misinformation and a complete lack of due diligence has come from city staff.

The latest has the urgent shutdown of the Memorial Centre pushed on to 2019. This most recent deadline came about when the two main user groups that will be most affected by this shutdown, the Lakers and Petes, questioned the facts staff used to come up with their initial suggestion.

It is now the time for council to step back from this confusing information they are being fed. This entire arena situation has been spinning out of control for more than five years. First, staff announced Northcrest Arena was on its last legs and must be replaced immediately. A fraught consulting process filled again with misinformation, like the need for 3,300 parking spaces for a new twin pad, saw council accept the staff recommendation to build the new twin-pad to replace Northcrest at Trent University. This was over strenuous objections, supported by sound alternatives, from arena user groups. Now five years later, Northcrest is still operating and nary a shovel can be seen at the Trent site.

Also the decision of putting the complex in the extreme north-east corner of the city while council is espousing the city’s expansion to the south-east, again shows a major disconnect between staff, council and residents.

Nothing should be done about the Memorial Centre floor. The urgency of floor replacement was overblown by Mr. Doherty and his staff, much like the need for that rebuilt library slowly rising like a phoenix on Aylmer Street. Qualified monitoring, a viable backup plan to replace the ice plant in an emergency and normal maintenance should be the present path for the centre.

Next, council should put the Trent twin-pad on a back burner or better still, take it right off the stove. That money, which seems to be slow in coming anyway, should be redirected to an immediate, well consulted plan to replace the Memorial Centre. Mayor Bennett has suggested and had drawings prepared to have a new entertainment centre and arena facility built on the soon-to- beabandoned public works site on Townsend St. The plan could be expanded to include a second ice surface much like Oshawa did with their new complex on a comparable piece of land. Get on with it, council! After years of delays, procrastinations and dawdling on other projects, show some initiative and take on a long overdue, needed and popular undertaking.

It is time this city steps up to the plate and shows that we are a growing community with an eye to the future. Kingston and Oshawa, our comparable sister cities, have left us in the dust with their foresight of building state-of-the-art entertainment facilities downtown. All Peterborough has is a shelf full of expensive consultant reports that only use will be to fill a shelf in the new library.

To this end, council must completely rethink where their advice comes from when it pertains to arena facilities. The past results of arenas have shown a distinct lack of consultation from those that work in and use them. This latest Memorial Centre debacle is just more of the same.

Council, after some very divisive decisions recently, solving this Memorial Centre debacle may be your last best chance to have something positive and popular to campaign on next year.