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City staff report on replacing aging West Ferris arena expected in 4-6 weeks

'Arena committee chair Mark King is hoping a final decision will be made on the future location of the arena by mid-August'

 Arena committee chair Mark King says senior city staff are meeting today, Wednesday, to begin reviewing proposals to replace the aging West Ferris Sam Jacks arena. 

"The situation at this point actually is how do you properly handle the public sector proposals and how do they mesh with the recommendation that the arena committee made with respect to Omischl," said King.

"So there are a lot of questions going on right now about the proper procedure in order to make sure it's fully transparent. That's all you can ask for." 

See related: New mall-arena aims to revitalize West Ferris 

King is hoping for a final decision from the arena committee by mid-August.  

"It will be four to six weeks before I hear anything back from staff. As soon as this happens, once we get the necessary information, my intention is to move on it. I suspect it will take the arena committee one meeting to make a decision."    

The committee chair says he personally has not seen the proposals.

"I don't want to jeopardize this situation by saying anything that would suggest I favour one over the other. We'll let the senior staff look at it and make recommendations back to the arena committee. Then at that point it will go to council through the committee process and on to a vote," explained King.

When actual construction would begin remains an unknown.

"There are so many pieces to this thing, and obviously the public has looked at and seen all the publicity as far as the North Bay Mall is concerned. That's thrown a major curve in the process and I would suspect that there will be a fair bit of negotiation that will go on," said King. 

"I can tell you honestly that it could very well end up like most property deals do, where it would come out after an in-camera discussion, and that's very possible that could happen, that Council would make that decision behind closed doors.and I think that may be what transpires here." 



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