With the Kingsway Entertainment District receiving a swift death blow at Tuesday’s city council meeting, the results of a legal challenge against the project have become less relevant.
“Right now, it’s a moot point as to whatever decision the court comes to,” John Lindsay told Sudbury.com, later clarifying it might still carry some relevance by setting a precedent.
Lindsay is president of the Minnow Lake Restoration Group, which lodged the legal challenge in question. A judicial review was held in April, at which a trio of judges heard the Minnow Lake Restoration Group’s case through lawyer Eric Gillespie. The case centres on their belief neither the city’s elected officials nor the public at large had adequate information when council voted to move forward with the KED – a municipal arena/events centre project on The Kingsway.
Numerous reports on the project requested by city councillors early last year were not made available in time for their July 14 vote to proceed, they contend.
Although moot in some ways now that the KED is effectively dead, Lindsay said, if successful, the legal challenge could still set a precedent for municipal government transparency in matters such as this.
It may require city councils to become “more circumspect with respect to their decisions,” and better allow all voices to be heard.
The results of the legal challenge are anticipated by September, at which time a decision is also expected regarding who will pay for the city’s $37,041 legal bill in the event they win.
Between this legal challenge and a Local Planning Appeals Tribunal challenge dismissed in late 2020, opponents have been blamed by some for delaying the project far beyond whatever timeline the city originally had in mind when city council first approved it in 2017.
In so doing, the project was pushed into the area of the COVID-19 pandemic and the high rates of inflation and economic uncertainty that came with it, which played a central role in more-than doubling the project’s cost to $215 million. This proved enough for city council to unanimously reject the project at Tuesday’s meeting after five years of consistent, though marginal, support.
“Our group has been blamed for delaying the project to this particular point, but our purpose was never to delay or stop it but for council to have exposure to all of the alternatives,” Lindsay told Sudbury.com earlier today.
Although their intention might not have been to delay the project, Gateway Casinos’ decision to put their investment on pause last year was made, in part, due to “significant risks” of the day, which they cited as including the legal challenge and a now-concluded OPP investigation.
While this decision ended up costing the city $1.1 million due to its last-minute nature, putting Bot Engineering & Construction Ltd. in a tight spot via the cancellation of site-preparation work, it also prevented the city from moving forward with installing infrastructure on land they are no longer building an arena/events centre on.
At the time, the total site preparation cost was estimated at $9.73 million, of which the city’s share would have been $5.9 million. In this week’s report to council, the city’s share of total site construction costs have been estimated at $19 million.
Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier successfully pushed around that time for the city to clarify there were no legally binding build agreements among the project’s partners, which included the city, developer Dario Zulich, Gateway Casinos and Genesis Hospitality (hotel).
Now that the project is dead, he told Sudbury.com that he’s thankful the city’s not on the hook for even more than they already are ($3.7 million, plus at least $500,000 in outstanding invoices at latest estimate this week).
Had Gateway Casinos not backed out and the city proceeded with site preparation work last year, he said it’s likely city council would have approved an incarnation of the project to proceed this week due to having already sunk millions of additional dollars into the project.
“This build it and they will come bulls*** belongs in a movie,” he said, reaffirming his belief the project was always going to be a standalone single-pad municipal arena whose infrastructure would service private adjacent land.
Although the Minnow Lake Restoration Group’s legal challenge centered on process, their chief concern in relation to the project has consistently been its environmental impacts, followed by the project’s cost.
Earlier this year, city engineering services director David Shelsted clarified the land proposed to house the KED was rezoned from industrial to its current use to accommodate the project and that its current zoning is “one of the least impactful developments you can have.”
The Minnow Lake Restoration Group will be keeping an eye on the property, though Lindsay said there’s unlikely to be cause for much concern for a while.
“We do have a lot of industrial land that’s already serviced,” he said. “This idea that particular piece of land is immediately going to be used for industrial development is, I would say, pretty far off in the future and would require a lot of development by the investor.”
Now that the city is no longer moving forward with the KED, a question mark lingers around what they will do with the approximately $85-million unspent dollars of the $90 million in debt secured for the project.
Lindsay believes the answer was made clear earlier in the meeting, when Montpellier presented a successful motion for the city to draft a business case to repair the Onaping Falls Community Centre, which the councillor said is currently falling apart due to neglect.
This, Lindsay said, is but one example of many municipal buildings facing neglect due to an ongoing underfunding of assets.
Montpellier agrees with this assessment.
“That is just one of the buildings that were let go,” Montpellier said, adding that he blames the city focusing its attention on a “piece of s*** hockey arena by the dump.”
Now that the KED is dead, Lindsay said the $98.5-million Junction East Cultural Hub library/art gallery building city council recently greenlit remains a point of contention, arguing the existing downtown library serves its purpose.
Sudbury.com reached out to Gateway Casinos, Genesis Hospitality and the Downtown Sudbury Business Improvement Area for additional insight but have not received any responses.
Developer Dario Zulich was also unavailable for comment, but issued an ambiguous statement via a media release this afternoon:
“The KED was never about just building an arena. It was about making this city greater and we are never going to stop. Now we pivot...”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
