By Brian Bigger
As mayor, I hear the many exciting plans and hopes people in Greater Sudbury have for our community. Your city council has an ambitious and exciting strategic plan, “Greater Together,” to capitalize on the energy and enthusiasm for progress that exists in our city.
This strategy calls for the City of Greater Sudbury to invest in large projects to stimulate growth, encourage conferences, sports and events tourism, and celebrate cultural diversity. I’m really excited that council has endorsed, in principle, the development of four large projects to be located within Greater Sudbury.
The city is taking a leadership role, working with our community partners, to directly and quickly achieve the growth we want. “Greater Together” emphasizes the relationship between governance, community engagement and information in support of better decision-making.
Having the right information, and making sure it’s used appropriately to support our decisions, is responsive, fiscally prudent, open and what you would expect from us. As your mayor, I believe strongly in this and know city council does as well.
Progress is well underway on the four large projects. The joint Art Galley of Sudbury and Public Library main branch project is being led by a group representing both organizations and city staff. City staff and community leaders are working with the proponents of the Synergy Centre group on the concept of a convention centre to develop a project plan. And, council recently voted to consider funding for Place des Arts as part of its 2017 budget deliberations in December.
City staff are also leading the work on an event centre concept. There are many opinions about this project, however currently no clearly defined specifications for what it should include.
In August, we issued a call to business experts in designing these specialized facilities to provide proposals to produce market research and analysis so we can clearly define what our community needs now and in the future. The expert will be chosen shortly.
The facility we ultimately get reflects council’s judgment about building features, size and amenities to address community needs, now and in the future. This is the community’s arena, and ultimately council wants to make a decision based on your best interests.
I recognize the community is excited about an event centre. I’m excited about an event centre, too!
I would like to see the development of an event centre as quickly as possible. But, we need to balance this with what’s reasonable. The motion brought forward on Sept. 12 would have changed the process, reducing the amount of information available to council to make a decision on what it needs.
Staff are committed to shortening the current timeline as much as possible without compromising the project analysis. These are all significant projects, whether you’re thinking about their cost or their community impact. Undertaking any of these without due diligence would be like buying a house without seeing it first.
With potential investments and commitments in the millions of dollars towards a greater quality of life in Greater Sudbury, we will use the right amount of information to get it right.
I thank council for their time, patience and passion in prioritizing and supporting these projects. They will position us to grow and be more dynamic and diverse.
I’m thrilled for the road ahead and look forward to seeing these projects take shape.
Brian Bigger is the mayor of Greater Sudbury.
