Consultants to help with multiplex talks

Cambridge council enlists three firms for negotiations with Cambridge Centre Mall

CAMBRIDGE — The City of Cambridge will bring some hired guns to the bargaining table to help negotiate a sports multiplex lease deal with the owners of the Cambridge Centre mall.

Deloitte Real Estate, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects and WeirFoulds law firm will line up on the city side as talks continue.

“We have some outside expertise to help us with negotiations,” deputy city manager Hardy Bromberg said.

This week, city council approved spending up to $300,000 to add those three consultants to support talks with Morguard Real Estate, the mall owner.

The city wants to build rinks and gyms on the site of an abandoned Sears in the Hespeler Road mall. A memorandum-of-understanding with the mall, originally expected to be presented to council in February, is still being worked on.

Talks with the mall owners began on Dec. 20, a few weeks after council rejected an initial lease deal to build a massive $80-million rinks-gyms-pools multiplex on Conestoga College land near Highway 401.

The mall’s central location was hailed as a dream location and ended two-plus years of controversy over the proposed Conestoga site on the Kitchener edge of the city. Deloitte helped evaluate potential sites.

The closing of Sears last year presented the city with a new opportunity to build rinks and gyms on the old department store site. It’s now up to city staff to work out a lease arrangement for the non-aquatic portion of the split-up multiplex concept with the mall owners.

“Both Deloitte and the architect are very intimate with the project because they’ve been involved with the Conestoga site,” Bromberg explained.

“So it makes sense to keep them on and help us with the Cambridge mall site.”

Deloitte will help the city with the business case for the project, as well as some business analysis. The architect will provide conceptual drawings. WeirFoulds, a firm the city is familiar with, will help with legal aspects of the project.

The $300,000 would cover the costs of all three consultants. Council approval was required to bypass the tender process to sole-source the services. The motion was discussed in closed session on Tuesday before being approved in open session.

A second multiplex site, which is to house pools, has not yet been selected. It could be Conestoga or perhaps the mall. So far, only rinks and gyms are on the table for the mall.

“Right now, it’s the non-aquatic portion,” Bromberg said. “Whether that changes later on, we don’t know.”