‘My concern is, it won’t happen’
The Cambridge sports multiplex was originally going to open in 2018 on a Conestoga College site, but as an election looms, nothing is certain anymore
CAMBRIDGE — Empty sky above. Empty land below.
Just a windswept field in front of Conestoga College’s Cambridge campus.
This is where the City of Cambridge, nearly two years ago, appeared poised to drop a massive sports multiplex — perhaps up to $80-million worth of rinks, gyms, pools — along Fountain Street and Highway 401 on land leased from the college.
Nothing has happened. Nothing may happen, at least not here.
The only construction activity? White and blue stakes driven into the ground by civil engineering students plotting their path for a course on global positioning systems.
The multiplex, once billed to possibly open in 2018, is a frustrating mirage at this moment. Its earliest appearance on this desolate Conestoga site — or one of four other locations under strong consideration — is now pegged for 2021 or 2022.
It didn’t have to be that way, according to Cambridge Coun. Frank Monteiro.
“We could have had the footings in the ground right now,” Monteiro said of the Conestoga site on Thursday. “We had never been so close.” But so close has become so far away. The multiplex vision, which reaches back a quarter-century into the psyche of a Cambridge weary of embarrassingly outdated arenas and pools, is in limbo again. It may even be split into separate buildings in different locations, a possibility city council has asked staff to investigate for a June report.
Monteiro, who chaired a task force looking into the design elements to be included in a multiplex, fears the moment for multiplex realization is squandered.
“My concern is, it won’t happen,” he said. “It won’t be built.”
Why? Delays push up construction costs with inflation. And the multiplex still has no universally-agreed-upon, set-in-concrete address.
The Conestoga location kicked up a fire-
storm of resentment from opponents who found its edge-of-town location alarmingly distant from Cambridge centre and disturbingly accessible to Kitchener residents.
Rallies were held. Petitions signed by thousands. The quick pace of collegecity dealings made many uneasy and they clamoured for more transparency and a more meticulous assessment of other options.
So here we are, two years later. The multiplex is still nowhere. Consensus remains elusive.
Recall the memorandum of understanding to pursue a lease deal with Conestoga passed 6-3 by city council two Julys ago? The unsigned paperwork on a 60-year agreement, for $2.5million, is gathering dust while Cambridge politicians dither over exactly where to locate the project.
Four other sites — which could cost the city between $4.5 million and $36.3 million to obtain, not including any site cleanups — are in the game now. They are more centrally located around Hespeler Road and Franklin Boulevard and Pinebush Road.
A citizen-led task force looked at 32 such sites and named those four the top contenders. This week, council asked for more information on all those sites.
It asked for city staff to look into public-private partnerships, most notably a potential alignment with the owners of the Cambridge Sports Park, private operators of two 20-year-old rinks on Franklin Boulevard on land leased from the city.
And with the suddenly acceptable possibility of carving the multiplex components into separate chunks, smaller industrial sites in the city could come into play.
“I do think it’d be great if we could try to keep it all as one,” said Coun. Nicholas Ermeta, who opposes the Conestoga site. “But from what I’ve been hearing in the community, it’s more about the quality of the amenities. Whether it’s one building or two buildings, as long as they get the amenities they want, that’s what they’re after.”
The multiplex mission, depending on your point of view, has either lost or broadened its focus. It may be for the better. But time is ticking toward the municipal elections of 2018.
“My biggest fear? We’re not going to get this built and we’re going to go into a new election,” said 43-yearold Chris Miranda, a Cambridge father of two hockeyplaying kids who led an online petition in favour of a sportsplex and favours the Conestoga site.
“If one new council member gets in, on the election, that council member needs to be caught up to speed.”
He worries that will take more time and push the project back a few more years.
Meanwhile, the city’s aging arenas — Dickson, Karl Homuth and Duncan McIntosh — become more glaringly antiquated.
Seventeen years ago, then-councillor Greg Durocher talked about the need to replace two of the three. All three remain in service today while Durocher, Cambridge Chamber of Commerce president, sat on the multiplex site evaluation task force.
Homuth, once described by former Mayor Claudette Millar as a “tin box,” was built in 1974 on the site of the burned down Preston Memorial Arena. Homuth Arena’s best days, if it ever had any, are clearly past.
“This Council needs to make a decision on the multiplex this year,” Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig said in an email to The Record this week.
“Our recreational facilities are deteriorating, and the longer we leave them the more money we will have to invest in them to keep them operational.”
So the mayor doesn’t intend to let multiplex plans, part of his election campaign in 2014, slide into the circular file. Karl Kiefer, a regional councillor for Cambridge, will appreciate that. He often pushed for some variation of a sports multiplex facility during his 23 years representing Preston on city council.
Kiefer left Monday’s city council meeting on the multiplex frustrated that the original vision was being toyed with while the location matter remained unresolved.
“You have to look at the situation now,” Kiefer said as he exited old city hall in Galt. “We’ve delayed it almost another year. Land values have gone up. Costs have gone up. We still haven’t decided on a location. You can’t go after funding from the federal or provincial government without a location.”
There are more options for location now that a project vivisection is possible.
Even opponents of the Conestoga site, like longtime environmental planning consultant Derek Coleman of Hespeler, want the multiplex to proceed in some form on some agreeable lot.
“Please show us some innovation in looking for and finding solutions,” Coleman told council this week.
But what if all the exploration and city staff factfinding point the project back to Conestoga? Don’t think for a second that the college offer is no longer in play.
“The Conestoga option is still on the table and it will need a two-thirds vote of reconsideration to remove it,” Craig wrote in an email.
Meanwhile, the college is watching and patiently waiting for Cambridge to make up its mind. Despite what Coleman has said, Conestoga College president John Tibbits insists that the site is indeed shovel-ready for a multiplex. He said the college won’t pull the offer from the table.
“We’re not emotionally involved in this,” Tibbits said. “I don’t want to put the mayor or the city under any undue pressure.”
He said Cambridge will have a reasonable timeframe to agree to their potential multiplex partnership, which went public nearly two years ago.
“I would assume it’ll be within the next two years that they’ll make a decision,” Tibbits said. “At some point, they’ve got to make a decision one way or the other, don’t they?’
Eventually, maybe in the fall, the pale cast of thought must give way to resolution.
“How much longer can we talk about this before we get shovels in the ground?” Miranda said. “And if the answer is no, let’s cut this project loose. Make a decision and move on.”