Swim event will cost city $400,000 in hotel rooms
New $7.5M East End Community Pool to serve as warm-up facility
Next year’s FINA international swim meet in Windsor will cost the city $400,000 in rooms alone — but will also fill every hotel in the city and spill over into Detroit.
The host-city agreement requires that Windsor pay for 500 Caesars Windsor rooms to house athletes, officials, and FINA staff for the December 2016 world short-course competition at the WFCU Centre.
“This is a very large, world-class event that will be broadcast literally to billions of people around the globe,” Mayor Drew Dilkens said Tuesday. “You’ll have the world’s best swimmers here, competing in a temporary pool that people know to be an ice surface. It will change the look of that arena.”
Plus, the city is building the $7.5-million East End Community Pool, which will serve as a warm-up facility for the competition, though it will remain in use afterward with a pool, diving area, splash pad, warm pool and more.
The six-day FINA World Swimming Championships 2016 (25 Metres) will cost about $11.3 million, with the federal and provincial governments contributing a total of $6 million and the City of Windsor chipping in up to $3 million, depending on how many sponsorships and grants are secured.
Expenses for the accompanying three-day FINA World Aquatics Convention will be covered by the Federation Internationale de Natation. Altogether, the FINA extravaganza will last 10 or 11 days and will account for 15,000-plus room nights in local hotels, not including the extra bookings for the convention.
City council voted Monday to sidestep a rule against sole-sourcing contracts, since it had little choice but to book through Caesars Windsor — where at full price individually, rooms can go for more than $300 a night.
“Caesars is releasing more rooms for FINA than they have for any other event in the city,” said Dilkens, noting that FINA chose the hotel for its capacity, convention rooms and extra amenities. “There’s no other hotel in town that has the facilities Caesars offers. It’s not like we can bid between two hotels next door to each other with similar facilities. This is the only game in town.”
On Monday, council also approved putting up $400,000 for the FINA convention as a guarantee for about 500 more rooms at Caesars Windsor, though the city will be refunded that money by FINA closer to the December 2016 competition.
Still, Coun. Rino Bortolin wonders if Windsor is spending its money wisely. “I’m not against events like FINA,” Bortolin said. “But I would like to see a return-on-investment audit after we have experienced the whole thing to see — if we’re going to be chasing events like this in the future — whether it’s the best place to spend our money.”
Does Bortolin feel FINA will provide a good event for the city?
“Sure, but so would a lot of things,” he said. “So does WIFF (Windsor International Film Festival). WIFF is a highly successful event. But last year we gave WIFF $1,000 through an arts and culture grant it took a major application to get. But we are funding FINA heavily.”
Bortolin thinks the city might be wiser to extend a helping hand to more successful events, as opposed to just a few huge sports ones. He would also like to see numbers proving Windsor’s bang for the buck in terms of sports tourism.
Peter Knowles, the British event director for FINA 2016 who will spend a year living in Windsor with his wife leading up to the December event, says the city will get plenty in return.
“You’re welcoming the world’s best swimmers from 175 countries,” Knowles said. “That’s a huge event in itself. It’s an opportunity to showcase Windsor on a global stage.”
Knowles said the Canadian government estimates the country and province will benefit from a $9.3-million economic spinoff as a result of the FINA world shorttrack championships and that Windsor will see $16.7 million in economic spinoff.
And that doesn’t include the buzz, the spectacle that an internationally televised world championship brings. “It will be presenting swimming as theatre, as a show,” Knowles said. “It will do it in a way that has never been presented in Windsor before. So Windsor will be doing something very special and I think it will capture the imagination of people, both in the city and nationally and internationally. It’s an opportunity for Windsor to show what it can do.”
Windsor will be doing something very special and I think it will capture the imagination of people, both in the city and nationally and internationally.