Red Deer is on the verge of losing the old Kinex Arena, which city-hired engineers say needs $8-million of investment or it will fail in three to five years.
City manager Craig Curtis said if work isn’t done to fix the arena’s slab, it could fail even sooner.
Since the building is very old – the arena is actually a retrofitted agricultural barn — Curtis said putting this kind of money into the facility is questionable. That‘s why there is a proposal in the 2019 capital budget to twin the arena at the G.H. Dawe Centre to make up for the soon-to-be-lost Kinex ice surface.
Coun. Michael Dawe asked, “What is the percentage of certainly about the failure of the Kinex?”
Curtis responded: “We believe it will fail in the next couple of years,” although “surprises” could happen either way.
Red Deer city council began budget deliberations on Monday with a gloomy forecast from long-serving city employee Curtis, who told them this is the most challenging budget he has worked on since the early 1980s.
The problem is the slow economic recovery. Curtis said Red Deer didn’t benefit greatly from what growth there was in the province in 2018, and forecasts for 2019 are not as optimistic.
“There is a slow down expected in 2019, with only modest growth in construction. It won’t be as good as in 2018 and 2018 was not a good year,” said Curtis.
As well, he said revenues the city receives from transit, recreation and culture have not recovered since 2016.
The city has downgraded expectations for construction and utilities revenues.
Curtis cautioned city councillors that there is much unpredictability province-wide. Future municipal sustainabilityinitiative funding from the province is uncertain, since Alberta’s debt is up, and to repay it, the province may be reducing the money it gives municipalities.
City council will be discussing a capital budget of $115.7 million, which was reduced by $774,000 since last year. Projections have shown that if the capital budget was to contain everything that was previously planned, with the aquatic centre coming up in the design stage next year and construction in the years following, the current debt of $347 million would increase to $570 million by 2027.
This doesn’t include internal borrowing from the city’s reserves, said Curtis.
As a result, administration is recommendating council delay the pool project by four years.
“Everybody wants the pool,” stressed Curtis, but it’s a project that he compared to three or four Servus Arenas in cost. It’s just a matter of slotting it in when it’s most financially feasible.
A down-scaled version of the pool project is expected to be debated by council on Tuesday.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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