Cambridge multiplex deal proves to be elusive for city, mall
CAMBRIDGE — The city’s multiplex talks with the owner of the Cambridge Centre mall have, so far, come up empty.
“I haven’t got anything to tell you because we haven’t come up with any solutions yet,” Coun. Frank Monteiro said on Monday.
So there’s no memorandum of understanding to pin up outside the empty, stripped-down Sears outlet at the Cambridge Centre Mall.
It was hoped that might be accomplished by the end of June. Now, the calendar reads July. There are no design plans posted to tantalize the public with concept images of $80 million worth of rinks and gyms, and possibly pools, coming to the site of an abandoned department store at a central “dream” location that plopped serendipitously into the city’s political lap last fall.
Two years of location-driven controversy, fuelled by a doomed memo of understanding to build a sports complex on leased Conestoga College land in Cambridge on the south side of Highway 401, came to an abrupt end. Or so it seemed last December as council tore up the proposed 60-year, $2.5-million dollar land lease deal with Conestoga.
Since then, nearly seven months of talks between city staff and Morguard Real Estate, the mall owners,
have produced no announcement. An outline of a deal was originally expected to be ready by February. That didn’t happen.
Come March, city council had agreed to spend up to $300,000 to add some expert muscle — Deloitte Real Estate, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects and WeirFoulds law firm — to its negotiating team.
A closed-door city council update on the matter two weeks ago led to no encouraging words in the public session. City staff had no deal to present.
“We told them to go back and negotiate again,” Monteiro said.
So no sports multiplex “coming soon” notices are going up outside Sears, where the department store signs have long since come down.
“We’re not at that point yet,” Monteiro said.
“It all depends on how the discussions are going to go, how the negotiation is going to go. We can’t just accept everything that they say. So we’ll go back to talk to them and see.”
With negotiations continuing for the multiplex continuing, Mayor Doug Craig said he couldn’t comment. Morguard did not respond to requests for comment.
So Cambridge’s long, oftenfrustrating multiplex journey appears at an uncomfortable standstill. That is troubling to many as three Cambridge’s antiquated rinks grow embarrassingly outdated while uncertainty again envelopes the multiplex.
“There’s a feeling out there in the public from people I’ve spoken to that, ‘Hey, is this even going to happen?’” said regional councillor Karl Kiefer, who was a multiplex champion on city council for two decades.
“Everybody’s been told by the mayor that it will happen. So the expectation is that it should happen. But now, with delay after delay coming, it’s a situation where people are nervous about it.”
And despite the public outcry against the Conestoga site, viewed by many as too far to the edge of town and too close to Kitchener, Monteiro still sees great merit in that rejected site.
A city multiplex on the college’s Cambridge campus was originally slated for construction in 2017, with a Fountain Street opening in June 2018.
“This thing could have been built by now, or at least 75 per cent, if not 90 per cent, built by now if we would have gone there,” said Monteiro, who chaired a city task force looking into multiplex design elements.
“I am still one of those who thinks Conestoga was the ideal place. But that’s the route we took now and that’s where we are. And we still have no place per se, definitely, where it’s going to go.”
Meanwhile, the city is splitting the $1.2-million cost of land for a 12-pitch soccer complex with Cambridge Youth Soccer. The deal for 54 acres across the Grand River from the college was announced as the World Cup began. The project had been in the works for six years.
“The idea was to have the multiplex up above on top of the hill and the soccer fields down below,” Monteiro said. “Just a short walk down the hill and you’re at the soccer fields.”
But Cambridge’s multiplex dreams seem tied up in talks with the Hespeler Road mall’s owners. If they should fail, there are other options.
The city owns 32 acres in southeast Galt it had earmarked for a community centre, Monteiro said. And Conestoga is still a possibility for the aquatic part of the multiplex, if it all doesn’t go to the mall.
“So as to what route we take, whether it be Cambridge Centre, south Cambridge or north Cambridge, we have to — depending on the discussions — we have to reassess what our options are,” Monteiro said.
Meanwhile, the cities of Guelph and Kitchener are moving forward with plans for multiactivity sports facilities in their south ends. MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects is designing the $60-million Guelph facility, which could open by 2021.
“We’re great at building libraries. We’re great at building theatres — and I’m in support of all that, that’s not a problem,” Kiefer said.
“But I don’t think we’ve done a very good job in terms of getting this underway. I do understand folks were disappointed in the (Conestoga) location. But having said that, I think if that location would have gone through, I think the construction would be well underway by now.”