City offers $250K to compensate Lakers

Petes won’t be able to play 2019-20 home games until November

City councillors plan to reimburse the Peterborough Lakers lacrosse team for roughly $250,000 lost on ticket sales during the 2019 season when the team is displaced from the Memorial Centre for repairs to the arena floor.

The Lakers will likely be moved to the Evinrude Centre to play their 2019 season, city councillors heard at a meeting on Monday night.

At that same meeting, councillors voted to repair the floor and to replace the ice rink pad at the Memorial Centre may be carried out next year — even though the project will cost $3.5 million instead of $2 million.

Work could start on June 3 for completion by Nov. 1, 2019, which would delay home games for the Peterborough Petes for a few weeks into their 2019-20 season.

That completion date is not expected to inconvenience the Petes though: a city staff report states the team has confirmed it can start its home season after Nov. 1, 2019.

Allan Seabrooke, the city’s commissioner of community services, told councillors Monday the Lakers may be playing at the Evinrude Centre next year – and the team stands to lose $250,000 in ticket sales as a result of being booted from the Memorial Centre.

Coun. Dean Pappas moved that the Lakers be reimbursed – and councillors agreed to it.

The city is the landlord of the best lacrosse team in the league, Pappas said.

“I think it’s incumbent on the

landlord to make sure the Lakers survive the next year of construction – and they stay in Peterborough,” Pappas said. “I wouldn’t want them to leave…. Compensating them for lost revenue is a good way around that.”

Coun. Don Vassiliadis said that other cities can only dream of having a team as good as the Lakers.

“I think we should give the Lakers our overwhelming support … I think we’re really lucky to have them,” he said.

But the additional cost to repair the floor of the Memorial Centre did not sit well with Coun. Keith Riel, who said the repair costs for the aging building are too much.

Riel pointed out that the city has racked up more than $7 million in repairs lately and is still paying off a renovation that took place a dozen years ago.

“Any idea when the bleeding is going to stop?” he asked city staff.

City chief administrative officer Sandra Clancy said the city has no choice but to maintain its building.

“We cannot not replace the floor,” she said. “It’s the key driver to all the activities in the building.”

More than a year ago, city staff noticed spalling and cracks in one area of the concrete foundation wall beneath the ice surface.

Council considered doing the repair work in the summer of 2018, but it would have displaced the Lakers lacrosse team in a year when they are eligible to host the Mann Cup.

Instead council voted to do the work in the summer of 2019.

A new city staff report states that the budget increase of $1.5 million is due to factors such as an increase of between 6 per cent and 10 per cent in construction costs, for example (which adds $400,000 to the cost), plus a contingency ($500,000) and permit and abatement costs ($182,000).

Mayor Daryl Bennett said the city is obliged to keep up the building.

“We do have a very successful franchise with the Lakers – we have an obligation to make sure their venue is safe,” he said.

“So yes, it’s a lot of money. And yes, it would be nice if we didn’t have to spend it.”

The mayor also stipulated that standard accounting practices be used to determine exactly how much money to reimburse the Lakers.

Meanwhile Clancy said the city is watching its spending on the Memorial Centre because the building’s future is unclear.

A consultant hired by the city has told council the building is “obsolete” and ought to be replaced by a new multi-purpose sport and entertainment centre.

Council hasn’t debated whether to build this type of new facility yet.

The consultant – Sierra Management of Toronto – is expected to offer a new report in September with details such as the cost of a new facility and potential locations in Peterborough.

The decision goes back to city council for a ratification Sept. 10.