I am writing to you to add my name to the growing list of people who require that the city replace the plagued KED development with the one recently proposed by 3rdLine.Studio, called Project Now, to renovate the Sudbury Arena and give us everything we want in an event centre (including indoor parking with no interruption to the hockey and basketball seasons).
This proposal has been carefully costed and would generate a projected saving of nearly $40 million over the KED costs, with the bonus of allowing for an immediate start date. (See https://www.projectnow.info/ and https://www.facebook.com/projectnowsudbury).
Given the city has had some extraordinary expenses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, saving approximately $40 million over the projected KED costs would be welcome news to Sudbury’s taxpayers.
It is important to stress that this new project addresses downtown parking, provides a modernized centre that would facilitate sports, and will accommodate concerts and other entertainment events. It will be the jewel of downtown and become a major benefit to the city.
I hope council will become champions for this new project and quash the proposed KED development, that will be mired in court and LPAT procedures for months, if not years.
These processes will not only take time with no guarantee that the KED will ever be built, but the city could save hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, by avoiding the legal fees of trying to move the ill-conceived KED forward.
It is time to pull the plug on the KED and get behind this new, vastly superior, and far less costly proposal.
I have offered my knowledge as a professor of environmental urban design to the mayor, and city council, to assist in moving this exciting project forward.
Bill Crumplin
Sudbury