Multiplex could be chopped in two

CAMBRIDGE — What if Cambridge chopped its proposed dream $80-million sports multiplex in half ?

Build the four rinks in one location. Plop the pool and gyms in another.

“I think that opens up the city to a whole new range of possibilities,” deputy city manager Kent McVittie told city council and about 60 city hall onlookers on Monday night. Location possibilities, that is. And location continues to be the most perplexing issue thwarting the city’s longdiscussed quest to find with an address for up to four rinks, three gyms and a big pool.

Chop the whole scheme in chunks and new location possibilities open up.

Maybe you don’t need 17 acres any longer. Perhaps the embattled option of leasing land from Conestoga College — to construct a multiplex on the Cambridge campus along the border with Kitchener — can be tossed into the Grand River.

Maybe one of four other potential sites, including a paintball-arena flea market across from the Y on Hespeler Road, need not be purchased for perhaps millions.

So much is up in the air again with Cambridge’s elusive multiplex, as three antiquated city arenas continue to tend their ice like withered old goalies in deer-hair stuffed, leather leg pads.

“Cambridge is in need of a lot of upgrades in a lot of sports areas,” said Alex Hourahine of Active Cambridge, which represents two dozen sports groups in the city. “We’ve known that for some time.” Time is getting away from the multiplex mission.

“It’s now two years since the announcement of the Conestoga College location,” said Hespeler resident Derek Coleman, a longtime environmental planning consultant and one of the most persistent critics of the Conestoga site.

“It’s not a shovel-ready facility.”

Shovels are still in the shed. First, there was talk of a 2018 opening for the multiplex. Then, it became 2019 and 2020. Now, all the hope is 2021 or 2022.

And city staff has a ton of questions to investigate before reporting back in June.

Councillors want to know about possible partnerships, perhaps with the Y or with the owners of Cambridge Sports Park on Franklin Boulevard. They want to know more about market values of potential sites and possible environmental cleanups needed.

“It’s like a Christmas wish list, folks,” said Mayor Doug Craig as he tried to keep track of incoming councillor requests for more information.

A year of design task force meetings were held, followed by months of site evaluation task force conferences. Suddenly, more questions engulf the multiplex than ever.

Two Novembers ago, Coun. Frank Monteiro said the city had never been this close to making the multiplex a reality. Now, the dream seems distant again.

Just ask Karl Kiefer, a regional councillor for Cambridge.

For his two-plus decades as a city councillor for Preston, Kiefer championed the multiplex concept for the city. He was a frustrated fly-on-the-council-chambers-wall on Monday night.

Is half a multiplex still a multiplex?

“It’s not the original concept,” Kiefer said as he left. “Right from the start, I’ve wanted a complex in Cambridge, anywhere in Cambridge …”

And the confounding issue of location seems more unsettled than ever before.

“You heard all the requests for more information tonight,” Kiefer said. “That’s all relevant in my way of thinking. But it’s also time. And time is more money.”

Costs go up the longer this is delayed, he said. And the first multiplex shovel was supposed to go in the ground next year.

“Not happening,” Kiefer said. “Not happening.”