It won’t be until January 2025 that an exact location within Downtown Sudbury will be proposed for the city’s $200-million arena/events centre.
Despite, or perhaps because of this lack of final decision, speculation has been emerging alongside concerns regarding soil conditions in the city’s historic downtown core.
Known information regarding Downtown Sudbury soil conditions was compiled last year in a Geotechnical Investigation and Design Report by EXP Services Inc.
In emailed correspondence to local journalists, Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc questioned whether his colleagues were fully abreast of the report’s findings.
“We, as a council, need a presentation from an EXP representative so we can make a property decision moving forward respecting our accountability to the citizens of Sudbury, with our honesty and transparency to every resident of Sudbury,” he wrote, also claiming a location for the events centre “has been already decided.”
This is far from the case, city Growth and Infrastructure general manager Tony Cecutti clarified to Sudbury.com, noting that a location decision is still months away and is not pre-determined.
As decided by city council, the events centre will be built within Downtown Sudbury’s South District.
This area is enclosed by Brady Street to the north, Paris Street to the east, Elgin Street to the south (plus a strip north of the CP rail tracks), and Grey Street to the east.
“The South District is a blank canvas,” Cecutti said. “The city owns so much land there, it creates a wonderful opportunity to consider the events centre anywhere in the South District.”
Although the city owns much of the South district, they do not own The Samaritan Centre at 344 Elgin St., the Sudbury Theatre Centre or the old railway station. The municipality does not yet own the Wacky Wings property, which the city is currently going through an expropriation process to acquire.
No decision has been made regarding what to do with the more than 70-year-old Sudbury Community Arena, Cecutti told Sudbury.com, and the fire hall at 193 Van Horne Street is currently under review as part of a broader emergency services infrastructure renewal project.
“They’re evaluating whether it’s more feasible to renovate or build new, so that’s an ongoing conversation,” he said.
Recent tender documents revealed that although the Van Horne station was tentatively slated to receive $16.2-million in renovations, the winning proponent is to provide “cost comparisons of a new build versus the proposed renovation.”
Two additional sites will be reviewed as part of the Van Horne station work, “west of Paris Street, south of Elm Street and east of the railway tracks.”
“By the time that decision is made, the events centre project is probably already well underway,” Cecutti said, adding that in the event the Van Horne station were to be relocated, its vacated land could “feasibly” be incorporated into the broader events centre project to accommodate ancillary services.
This leaves a swath of land within the city’s South District available for the events centre project and ancillary services, such as a potential private hotel and conference centre.
The exact location of the arena will be established first, with the city awarding a single-source contract to KKR Advisors Ltd. earlier this month to, in part, analyze existing information to help determine a potential location.
“We’re not trying to pre-suppose we have answers to any of the questions,” Cecutti said.
“We’re not going to make a decision about the preferred location based on any one single criteria. We’re going to balance all the variables as best as we can understand them, and we’ll pick a location that optimizes functionality with the least risk for construction.”
As outlined in EXP Services Inc.’s report last year, soil conditions will play a role in determining an ideal location. Three of four bore holes found bedrock at a depth of between 31.8 metres and 37.5 metres. A fourth bore hole at the northern edge of the South District failed to find bedrock at a depth of 47.2 metres.
Soft soil conditions may limit the type of building foundations the city and private developers can build, with EXP recommending the use of micropile foundations as a potential solution, such as those which the nearby Laurentian University School of Architecture is built on.
Soil conditions and the potential need to use micropiles in the South District is a long-established concern which factored into the June 2021 Sudbury Events Centre Update Report.
In addition to contingencies baked into the events centre’s $200-million budget is an $18-million structural and soils premium to accommodate soil conditions.
“All of Northern Ontario, you need to be careful with soil conditions no matter where you go,” Cecutti said. “You’re going to find loose, very unconsolidated materials in a lot of areas.
“Finding really good quality ground with consolidated material is not very common anywhere in Northern Ontario, so it certainly has to be a consideration.”
Existing bore holes are not adequate to say anything definitive about soil conditions, he added.
“I expect to have to do more field investigations, more bore holes as part of this project and perhaps other development that might occur in the South District as well,” he said, noting that existing work merely establishes an early indication of potential soil conditions.
“You can put structures on areas with weak soils, you just have to design your foundation according to the conditions,” he said, describing these as “very careful considerations” the city will need to make alongside the experts they hire.
“It’s certainly our hope, from what we know, that we can build this for the budget that council has allocated.”
As for the private ancillary services the city is striving to attract to the area surrounding the upcoming arena/events centre, Cecutti clarified that the only investments the city has made thus far have been purchasing properties and clearing them of buildings.
These investments, called “de-risking,” could potentially extend to other things, such as soil cleanup in the event contaminants are found, but nothing has been determined yet.
Arenas are typically built before private investments are made, he said, and the events centre isn’t slated to open until May 2028.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
