Saskatoon residents may soon get their say on the proposed downtown arena, a project that could become the largest in the city’s history.
Ken Wood, a retired arena manager, announced on Aug. 21 his plans to organize an effort to force a referendum on the proposed $1.2 billion Downtown Event and Entertainment District. At the same time, he launched voteondeed.ca, where people can find details on the petition to force that referendum.
“Right now, we’re concentrating on volunteers. We’re thinking that is going to be key, getting out there, door to door,” said Wood, former CEO of Credit Union Centre.
Wood said nearly 100 people are offering to canvass. Once they start, they will have 90 days to collect signatures from 10 per cent of eligible voters to force a referendum.
Based on information from the City of Saskatoon, the threshold for meeting this requirement is 26,615 valid signatures. Should the group gather the required signatures, the petition would need to be presented to the city clerk within 90 days after the first signature is collected. A referendum would then need to happen within nine months.
Wood said his group is still working with legal on how the ballot question would be worded.
While the question would be hypothetically structured, Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block sees the real question facing the community as something beyond a simplistic, binary ‘should the city proceed or not with the project.’
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“We will be making a significant investment in one of two things: taking care of the infrastructure we already own, which will be expensive, or investing in new infrastructure that we will own,” said Block.
Wood sees that as a false argument. He believes renovations at SaskTel Centre could be made much cheaper than some are saying.
“People, when looking at SaskTel, when they are looking at the renovation, they are looking at bringing it up to NHL standards. To me, that’s a non-starter,” said Wood.
Wood said renovations at the existing facility could be done for much cheaper than that.
But Block believes Saskatoon requires a venue with a higher roof to accommodate acts that would otherwise end up in other cities.
“To me, one of the really big questions should be … are we going to invest in aging infrastructure that will not serve the future in the way that modern cities are able to serve and what does that do to our competitive edge?” said Block, noting the city’s responsibility to maintain infrastructure.
“The roof of the building has to be higher, or we can’t attract a lot of the events that a lot of cities are going to be able to attract, including, probably, Regina.”
Wood said we could know as soon as next week when the petition will be launched.
In July, the provincial government said it would match federal funding up to a third of the eligible project costs. So far, there has been no funding commitment to the project from the federal government.
Block said the direction of council has always been that the cost will not impact property taxes.
“If that were ever to change, that would come back to council and there would be a full public discussion at that time. And I am not anticipating that for a number of reasons,” Block said.
Wood said cost is an issue that has come up repeatedly with people he has spoken with.
“People are very concerned about the financial viability of this project. It’s [would be] 100 percent government-financed. And there is no case of a major arena being built like this in North America and being fully funded by government,” said Wood.
Back in June, the city of Saskatoon signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore a possible partnership with Muskeg Lake Cree Nation.
Earlier this year, city council rejected a proposal from administration to enter into an agreement with U.S.-based Oak View Group 360 to manage the arena.
