Scott Radley: Downtown entertainment precinct deal now expected by the end of May
Last summer when the city announced it had chosen the group to renovate FirstOntario Centre, the FirstOntario Centre Concert Hall and Hamilton Convention Centre as part of a downtown revitalization, it said a deal to finalize everything would be done before the end of the year.
Then in January, we were told it would be a couple more months. Which would've meant March.
Yet it's now April and there's still nothing. Should we be concerned?
We are very, very close," says PJ Mercanti, president of the Urban Precinct Entertainment Group. I would assume the city believes the same. And so I feel very confident we will get over the finish line very soon."
The city does, in fact, share this sentiment.
Ward 2 Coun. Jason Farr - the venues are in his ward - says he's been told to expect something in front of council at the final General Issues Committee meeting in May, five weeks from now.
All I've heard, only a few days ago, was that excellent progress is being made," he says.
COVID-19 has delayed things, Mercanti says. Plus, he says this is a significant deal with a lot of moving parts. The arena renovation is said to be a $50-million project, upgrades to the concert hall, convention centre and art gallery will add another $16 million and another $340 million in mixed-use development should follow in the area. Add it all up and you're talking about $400 million or more. It's huge.
But nothing has gone off the rails, he insists. Everything is moving toward a conclusion. A master agreement is coming.
Let's hope that's accurate. Because sooner is better for obvious reasons.
First, the quicker the facilities are taken off the city's hands, the less taxpayer money it has to spend on upkeep. The city is only on the hook for $800,000 in maintenance this year. But if it was somehow still operating the properties well into next year - or if negotiations somehow broke down - the budget calls for $7.8 million in fixes to keep them open.
Mercanti points out that once a deal is signed, it doesn't mean work can begin immediately. There will still be permits that need to be acquired and other legalities to be worked through.
Back when his group was chosen and the city issued that news release saying a deal would be done by the end of 2020, it said construction (which could take three to five years for the entire project) would begin in the fall. That would've meant eight or nine months down the road from the moment everything was signed.
Push everything along to match the length of the delay and you're now looking at sometime early next year for work to begin. That would mean shovels in the ground in the middle of the Hamilton Bulldogs' season, around the time the Around The Bay Race that uses the arena as a finish line, possibly when the traditional and popular March break Disney On Ice stop comes to town and what could be a busy post-COVID event schedule in the building.
Do you book these things and others and hope you can host them? Or do you tell them the building will be out of commission but possibly find out later that construction won't have started by then and lose out on those events?
Mercanti has previously said construction can be done in different ways - the arena bowl might not have to be done at the same time as other parts of the building which could allow the hockey team to keep playing while work was being done - but this uncertainty would surely make scheduling challenging if things drag on.
But he says everyone should breathe. The deal will get done soon.
We should be wrapping up our negotiations reasonably quickly," Mercanti says. What (the city's) timing is beyond that ... they haven't obviously articulated the specifics to us yet. But our understanding is that it's going to be as quickly as reasonably possible."
Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com