Originally Posted by HalifaxMtl666
No cash from feds
City funds $55,000 study to assess convention centre needs and reassess business case without federal funding
Times & Transcript Staff
Published Wednesday August 22nd, 2007
Appeared on page A1
Securing federal funding has long been a stumbling block in the City of Moncton's plans to build a convention centre.
The Times & Transcript has learned that after much patient waiting, city staff have finally reached the conclusion that federal funding is likely not going to happen and are now moving forward on determining what that will mean for the project.
That means looking at every option -- including dropping the idea of a convention centre altogether and finding alternate ways to fill the city's need for meeting space.
Ian Fowler, the city's general manger of recreation, parks, tourism, and culture, says Toronto firm PKF Consulting has been hired at a cost of $55,000 to study the situation.
The management consultant firm, which specializes in the hospitality, real estate, and tourism industries, is to look at what will best suit Moncton, whether a stand alone convention centre, a centre attached to an existing structure or combined with something like a casino, or increasing meeting space in the city in other ways.
They've been asked to come up with three options and recommend the best one for the city.
"We'll have some very good recommendations on tourism in Moncton regardless," Fowler says of the report, which is expected to be delivered by the end of November.
Council has been briefed on the situation and Verdiroc, the Toronto-based development company that has an option on the city-owned Beaver Lumber property, one of the prime sites being looked at for the convention centre, is aware the study is being done.
The push toward a convention centre stems back to a feasibility study carried out by Horwath Consultants in 2000 that found Moncton was under-served in terms of meeting space.
As a result, the city began exploring the idea of a convention centre in earnest.
But much has changed in the interim, and the convention market now isn't what it was in 2000.
The delay in funding has thus brought a blessing of sorts with it -- it gave the city plenty of time to do its homework.
City staff have been working closely with meeting planners across the country, asking what makes them choose a site.
Large companies and other organizations usually have meeting planners on staff or employ them to do the work of setting up events.
What the city has found is that a convention centre really might not be the best solution for Moncton.
Dozens of factors go into making a community a suitable host for a convention centre, including things like how many people you can get into the city on direct flights in a day and what type of hotels are available.
Kelly Cain, Moncton's director of tourism and events, says they've been taking a good hard look at what market Moncton can best serve.
People will not change flights four times to get here, for instance, and while the city is not lacking in hotel rooms, it is lacking in the four- and five-star rooms convention space demands.
An $18-million project, the figure the city has been using, likely would not be meet the needs of today's conventions and meetings.
Cain says they've been looking very closely at what is realistic for Moncton, what the city really needs.
She says meeting planners have been very receptive to being approached and asked what they want to see in convention space and pleasantly surprised that the city is doing so, since they are not often consulted in that way.
Cain says they've gained some very, very good advice that can be applied to a dedicated convention centre or meeting space in general.
Paul Thomson, the city's director of communications, says the PFK report should give the city the information it needs to make a decision once and for all.
"We're pretty confident we'll get from them what we need to make a decision," he says. "We're going to know by the end of December what we're going to do or not do."
Thomson says the move doesn't preclude the city from getting federal money, it is simply accepting the fact that at this point it seems very unlikely that funding will come through and making the decision to go forward on that basis.
Fowler says the absence of federal cash means the business case for a convention centre is completely changed.
Where before the city was looking at footing a quarter of the cost, which could possibly have been off-set by the taxes generated by such a centre, taking on more of the bill would require dipping deeper into the budget which may not make good business sense.
Those are all things the new report will examine.
PKF starts its work a week from Monday.
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