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Range of costs presented for Paralympic arena

Council to make $20 million decision at Oct. 17 meeting

The preliminary costs are in and a Paralympic arena in the village could range in cost between $27 million and more than $61 million.

Those were the draft figures presented to council on Monday afternoon, with the understanding that the numbers would be refined before they are presented to the public at today’s (Oct. 6) open house.

Deputy Administrator Bill Barratt reiterated the importance of doing what’s right for Whistler, as opposed to the economics of the deal.

"We’ve always made the right decisions by being very careful in our planning," he said after the meeting. "Economics doesn’t drive good planning."

Three options were laid out to council for different types of arenas on Lots 1 and 9, the forested land behind the Brew Pub.

The first is described as a "bare bones" traditional arena – a steel box with a concrete façade. With no parking and no requirements to meet the strict village design guidelines, this arena would cost roughly $25 million. At least $2 million more would need to be spent in order to make the arena suit all the Paralympic requirements.

The second option is Eldon Beck’s proposal. Beck is the master designer of the original village. His concept for an arena includes a free-form ice sheet with no walls. The roof and wall structure is described as a tensile membrane, similar to a big-top tent. Details on snowload for this design are still to be worked out.

Staff has determined that it’s possible to build a standard international sized ice rink over Beck’s free-form ice surface, which would meet the Paralympic requirements. The preliminary costs of this option are roughly $30 million. This number could change if the ice surface is smaller.

One major issue with this proposal, however, is that there may not be any controls on the condition of the ice surface. A good ice surface is critical for the Paralympics.

And yet, Beck’s proposal does bring animation to the village, more so than a traditional box arena.

"It’s got the Kodak moment component to it," said RMOW Planner Martin Pardoe.

It is not a traditional arena. There could be ice skating under the tensile roof from November until the spring. During the summer months it could be programmed for other events.

The third option presented to council is the one offered up by the local business community, in particular businessman Norbert Doebelin. His proposal, drawn up by architects that he paid for, called for commercial/institutional buildings to prop up the roof of a rink. Those buildings could include a culinary school, museum, dance studio among other things. The roof itself is intended to provide seating in an outdoor amphitheatre. The stage would be the roof of one of the commercial buildings. Doebelin estimated it would cost about $20 million.

Preliminary staff figures put that cost closer to $61 million – $39.4 million for the arena, $22.3 million for the other buildings. The commercial component would be 110,000 square feet surrounding the arena but not attached to it.

Councillor Nick Davies questioned the figures. He said the original concept was based on an idea that the commercial development would pay for and prop up the roof of the rink, leaving the municipality with just the cost of the rink.

"It sounds to me like you haven’t costed out that option," said Davies.

Staff said they would have revised figures by Thursday’s open house.

All the costs include a 20 per cent premium for building in Whistler. And, said Pardoe, the numbers on each option could be out by as much as 20 per cent either way at this stage of the planning.

The costs also include the construction escalation figures for the coming years. Pardoe called it an "unprecedented time" in the construction industry with soaring costs in a booming construction climate.

The current figures do not include any revenue that could come from titling the building or from sponsors. Those figures cannot be quantified until more work has been done on the design and programming of the arena.

Council also received information gathered at the last public open house, which was held at the end of August.

Judging by the more than 200 comment forms that were filled out, 68 per cent were in favour of taking VANOC’s $20 million and building an arena.

Councillor Ken Melamed struggled with the numbers from the open house. The results he said can be somewhat skewed because the people who show up are the ones that don’t generally like what the municipality is trying to do.

Recognizing that flaw in the information gathering process, Melamed said at the end of the day it will be council’s decision.

"All we can do is get the information we can get and go from there," he said.

Even with this new information it is still not clear what staff’s recommendation will be to council in the coming weeks. And so the question remains – should Whistler take VANOC’s $20 million and build an arena to host the Paralympic sledge hockey events in 2010?

"(We’re) still in the same place," said Barratt. "(We’ve) still got to make a hard decision."

Council is expected to make their final decision on whether they should build a village arena or not at the Monday, Oct. 17 meeting.