The City of Revelstoke will not receive a hoped-for $10-million grant to upgrade the Revelstoke Forum and has adopted a budget that plans to proceed with $7.3 million in debt borrowing to replace the roof at the aging facility.
To add complexity to the bad news, the COVID-19 pandemic is adding further disruption to plans to renovate or repair the facility.
In a March 18 letter from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program, the granting organization said they’d received more applications than they could fund. “We would like to advise that, after careful consideration, the above-noted project was not selected for funding.”
The grant application, filed in early 2019, was for a project to replace the roof and do additional significant upgrades, such as improving accessibility, adding more change rooms, increasing the entrance area size, and other upgrades.
In January of 2019, council met and debated whether to apply for the infrastructure grant for the Revelstoke Forum roof project. Another option that had been in development for years, which staff said was not ready to proceed for this grant application, was to build a smaller facility, likely in the parking lot adjacent to the Revelstoke Community Centre.
The City of Revelstoke had originally planned to conduct a public consultation process about the two main options, which included repairing the existing facility or building a new, smaller facility that could accommodate minor hockey, but wouldn’t be adequate for Junior B hockey and would have no curling facility.
On March 27, city council adopted a 6% tax increase, moving ahead with the existing budget with some discussion of making adjustments on the move to accommodate COVID-19 issues.
Learn more about the 2019 decision to apply for the grant here:
Parks director: Plans will need adjusting due to COVID-19
City parks and recreation director Laurie Donato said the news was a frustrating blow for the city, and that combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, would lead to a discussion with staff and council about the plans moving forward.
“We haven’t had any discussion with staff and council on this,” Donato said in an April 7 interview. “Council will be seeing this for the first time tomorrow.”
Donato said the COVID-19 situation has already led to disruptions with existing capital project contractors, adding an additional layer of complexity to the situation.
She said the COVID-19 disruption means that options are on the table for discussion, including potentially revisiting the concept of a smaller facility.
“That’s something we have to discuss, and I imagine we’ll be discussing in the coming weeks,” Donato said. “And discuss how we are going to move forward with capital projects.”
She said she’d discuss the roof situation with the city’s engineering department, saying pushing the project back a year is an option.
“That is something council may choose to ask staff to do,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
The roof has been deteriorating for years and requires an engineering plan to shovel snow from the roof.
“I don’t think we’re at the shutdown stage,” Donato said, adding they are working with the structural engineer to mitigate risks. “Eventually, you have to do something with this roof. We have been talking about this since 1980, and the roof was built deficient to start with.
“At some point we need to deal with the roof. We can’t keep prolonging the roof repair or replacement. It has to be dealt with.”
Finance director
City finance director Tania McCabe said the plan is to proceed to borrowing, likely in 2021.
She said the debt payment projections are $344,000 per year for 25 years, and the COVID-19 related turbulence in the financial markets means the city could get a better rate than normal.
“With the markets crashing, we could get actually quite a bit lower interest rate,” she said.
Analysis: Bad news on bad news
The City of Revelstoke had scheduled and planned consultation processes in mid-2019 about the two competing options for a replacement — repair the existing facility or build a new, smaller one. However, when the grant opportunity for $10 million became available in late 2018, city staff said they were only prepared to meet the grant deadline for the renovation project, not the new smaller facility.
A $10-million shot in the arm, all things considered, would have more than likely tipped the scales in favour of renovating the existing facility.
Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program took a lot longer to give an answer than anticipated, and without certainty, the question of how to fund the project dragged through the recently completed budget process, leaving the one option on the table by default.
Due to the nature of the timing, the city opted to budget in $7.3 million in debt borrowing to complete the project. The first loan payment won’t be due until 2022, if that’s the option chosen.
The City of Revelstoke has long had designs on the parking lot near the fire hall. The city owns the former Century Valen building and also owns the yellow house next to it. The acquisitions were made over the years with an eye to future expansion of city facilities, including possibly relocating city hall and co-locating with other recreation facilities.
Donato said those options may be back on the table, emphasizing the discussion will continue at the council table this week.
The facility’s operating costs are significant. In 2018, the last year complete numbers are available, the facility’s net deficit was $436,474 in operating costs alone, not including ongoing capital upgrades, such as for the arena chiller, which was budgeted in 2019.
An engineering report notes a long list of problems that need to be repaired at the facility. If the roof was repaired and the facility upgraded, it wouldn’t be the end of repairs needed at the Forum. A summary of upcoming upgrades in the next few years totals $1,071,000, and a new arena ice surface is slated for 2024 at a cost of $1.5 million.
If the city proceeds with the project as is, the $7.3 million in new debt borrowing will face a counter petition process whereby if 10% of registered voters sign a petition against the borrowing, it will be blocked, and the city will need to change plans or take the question to a full referendum.
At the end of the day, news of the unsuccessful grant application is bad news for everyone in Revelstoke, coming at a time when we needed it least. It’s unclear what the public would say about options for the facilities — many have expressed a preference for the character, size and history of the existing facility — but the capital and operating costs haven’t been laid out for comparison.
Suddenly, we live in a world where every decision is COVID-19 related. In light of the new extreme financial challenges brought on by the pandemic, and the public’s ability to block borrowing at the ballot box, the path forward for this project, whatever it may be, will require political stewardship in the coming months.
Want to know more?
-Read Laurie Donato’s overview report from early 2019 (PDF) with recommendations to council here.
-View the 2017 Needs and Demands Assessment by David Hewko here (PDF).
-See a 2014 City of Revelstoke Forum life cycle costing report.
-See a 2017 Arena Needs Assessment by David Hewko.
-Read the 2017 Revelstoke Forum Roof Structure Assessment and engineering assessment.
-Access all of these documents, by starting on the January 8 Revelstoke City Council meeting agenda. There are several other supplemental documents, including summaries.
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