Pending approval from Greater Sudbury City Council, the Kingsway Entertainment District project will be inaugurated by November 29.

While Tuesday meeting, City Council will vote on a resolution to approve negotiations with staff to begin site preparation work for the long-discussed project municipal hockey arena and entertainment center project.

Work to be undertaken by Oakville Headquarters Bot Engineering & Construction Ltd. which is preparing to mobilize on the site in November.

This is the same company the city awarded the site preparation contract to in 2018, but work was delayed at the time due to legal recourse.

In 2018, their bid was the lowest of seven bids received, at around $ 8.5 million excluding HST.

Due to the time spent and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the costs of labor, equipment and materials, an increase in the contract is being negotiated, according to a report from the director of engineering services David Shelsted, which the board will review on Tuesday.

The revised contract total will be around $ 9.4 million, which Shelsted says is still lower than the second-lowest bid received in 2018.

This cost will be reinforced by the maintenance by the City of an engineering consultant to provide contract administration and inspection services, at a cost of approximately $ 330,000. The city is currently negotiating with JL Richards & Associés Ltée., which is headquartered in Ottawa and offices in Greater Sudbury.

The total site preparation cost of $ 9.73 million will be allocated in accordance with the cost sharing agreement among the main project partners. The city will commit $ 5.9 million, Gateway Casinos & Entertainment will spend $ 2.2 million, the hotel share is $ 1.1 million, and the developer share is $ 530,000.

The city’s share is the largest in this initial state, largely because it is responsible for parking the $ 5.6 million event center.

In a recent Facebook post by ward 3 of the council. Gerry Montpellier, the lack of an identified hotel is cited as a major concern and the councilor declined to call the project the Kingsway Entertainment District and instead referred to the project as a “stand-alone hockey arena on the outskirts of town”.

In that same Facebook post, Montpellier alleged that it was offered a bribe to support the location of the project in 2017 – an allegation the city council recently voted to have investigated by the Grand Police Department. Sudbury.

However, neither this nor an ongoing legal challenge by the Minnow Lake Restoration Group appears to be delaying the project, and the Shelsted report notes that the project partners (City, Gateway and the developer) have resumed meeting every two weeks. and that all parties have accepted the contents of the report presented to city council on Tuesday.

Although the city council is very divided on the KED, the project seems to have retained the confidence of a sufficient number of elected officials in the city to proceed as planned.

Tuesday’s decision will be followed “over the next few weeks with a process to select a site manager / operator so that this company can be in place to participate in the design-build tendering process that will begin. in early 2022, “according to the Shelsted report. .

It is still expected that a facility will celebrate its grand opening in 2024.

In addition to the decision on a site preparation contract on Tuesday, city council will later vote on a site operator and a final budget based on the results of a design / build request for proposals.

Tuesday’s city council meeting will be broadcast live from 6 p.m. at grandudbury.ca.