CENTRAL MANITOULIN—Plans for a new multi-purpose facility cited in Mindemoya to replace aging arenas and community centres in Providence Bay and Mindemoya are meeting opposition from members of the community. One resident, Chris Walker of Providence Bay, has started a petition seeking to express the level of opposition to the plan.
“The Municipality of Central Manitoulin has been pushing for construction of a new multi-million-dollar arena facility to be located in Mindemoya since at least 2018,” he said. “At stake will be the loss of all of your existing arenas and community centres (they will be torn down or sold),” he alleges.
“A lot of people don’t know what the council is planning,” said Mr. Walker when contacted by The Expositor. “They might if they read The Expositor, but the council won’t send out letters. Some people don’t have computers and are not able to go to the town website.”
Mr. Walker said he is very concerned about the potential cost to taxpayers should plans for a new complex go forward. “The amount suggested by council in 2019 was $8 million,” he said. “Now here we are in 2023 and costs of construction have escalated. I started looking around and a facility around the same size, 45,000 square feet, came in at $30 million. A second reference point is another arena in Tavistock with a budget of $22 million. The potential cost of this dream/nightmare was estimated in 2019 at $16 million. Currently that has grown considerably. Even with government funding, the remaining 50 percent would be carried by the township and paid for by increases to our taxes.”
Mr. Walker asserted that the two arenas, one in Providence Bay and the other in Mindemoya are only utilized 25 percent of the time.
“We have only 2,300 official residents,” he said. “That’s 1,250 taxpayers. What do we need a new arena for? Central Manitoulin Public School only has 218 students. The high school has the M’Chigeeng arena right beside it. What on Earth makes council think it makes sense to spend $25-$30 million on a new arena?”
“Council has approved a feasibility study at a cost of $100,000 to determine the costs of keeping the existing buildings and simply performing required maintenance,” said Mr. Walker. “The alternative is to keep the two existing arenas and the community centres and perform the needed and deferred maintenance and take the opportunity for some necessary upgrades.”
Mr. Walker points out that both referenced arenas and the Mindemoya Community Centre are structurally up to date thanks to renovations that have been ongoing on those facilities.
Mr. Walker also pointed out that both the Mindemoya and Providence Bay arenas were built as memorials. “There is the J.H. Hunt Memorial, the veterans built the community centre and they also built the arena in Prov,” he said. “We shouldn’t be destroying our heritage by building something that will stand out like a sore thumb.”
Mr. Walker said he is also concerned about what he characterized as a “fiasco” concerning the municipality’s waste concerns. The petition can be found online at change.org. As of press time Monday the petition had garnered 228 signatures.
A public meeting of the Central Manitoulin recreation infrastructure committee will see a Five Points Community Centre presentation take place at 7 pm on Monday, February 27 at the Mindemoya Freshwater Community Church. The presentation was to include a question-and-answer session. See next week’s edition of The Expositor for the story of what happened at that meeting.
