Council and the public received a fulsome arena update at a special, late afternoon meeting yesterday. The arena agenda item receiving the lion’s share of the hour and a half long meeting.
Dr. Dan Tingley of Wood Research and Design (WRD) and Bill Goulding, Special Projects Manager, provided a report and responded to the many questions from council and comments from a resident delivered at the Public Input Session, at the opening of the meeting.
Well into the meeting, Councillor Merrill Seidel provided a succinct overview of the goal. “I just want to reiterate to the public that we are not putting a 5 or 10-year fix on this arena.”
“We are fixing this arena for 40, 50 years, is what we are doing. So, I understand people are frustrated with the delay, but if you look at it in the long run, it’s minor,” he said.
Seidel observed that several factors including delay of electrical upgrades and issues with the micro pile solution have contributed to the delayed opening. “So, it’s not just one item. It’s a combination of four or five items that have delayed this project.”
Wednesday’s decision
The decision required of council, was whether to accept the staff recommendation “that the reopening of the Rogers Arena be postponed indefinitely and that a new target goal for reopening the Rogers Arena be set for the 2025-2026 season.”
Mayor Andrew Wannan motioned the recommendation. It was moved by Deputy Mayor Charles Flintoff, seconded by Councillor Norman Mann and passed unanimously.
Goulding provided a verbal overview of the written report that was included in the agenda package published on the City’s website the previous day. In summary, he said, “In short, staff and the design team and the vendors on site have been working consistently since last spring to realize the reopening of the facility. Along that path, we’ve encountered several obstacles.”
He described some of the obstacles, adding, “One of the ones that in my mind sticks out the most is the soil conditions.”
Goulding explained the “unanticipated encumbrance” was discovered in the spring of 2024 when frost began to come out of the ground and the building structure monitoring system alerted to movement.
Since that time, different solutions have been proposed and each, as onsite work began, have uncovered additional soil issues.
During the Public Input Session and early in the meeting, comments were made questioning whether or not the project should have been undertaken.
The cost of a new arena
Councillor Luc Morrissette, putting a question on the floor that was circulating on social media, asked, “What would have been an estimated cost on a brand-new arena?”
Responding, Goulding informed that pre-pandemic costs developed “was found to be $18 million,” adding, “I don’t think I would put much weight on that now.
Last year, the City of Brockville determined that a 400-seat arena had a current price tag of $25 million.
And Goulding observed, “The question that we’ve always faced when presented with this conundrum with the arena is, do we fix this arena - or do we not have an arena?”
Soil issues
Tingley described WRD’s role in the geotechnical aspect of the project. “Our specialty is structural and timber, so we’ll never wander into geo[technical], because that’s not our specialty. So we retained two separate firms … to investigate the geo.”
And he described, “we had them in, in May to drill three test holes per side of the building.”
“We went down 20 feet to understand the capabilities of the soil. At that time, the capabilities of the soil looked satisfactory for a screw pile solution and an outrigger solution.”
He went on to explain that when the contractor arrived to do the work, “it failed miserably because they hit big cavities in the soil and boulders.”
Subsequently, the recent attempt at micro piles, determined the bedrock is much deeper than expected. The plan now, is to put micro piles to a depth of 65 feet and do a tension test to determine their ability to provide support if they have not found bedrock above that depth.
“When you make decisions working forward, you do the best you can in light of the current knowledge and understanding.”
“Everybody has the benefit of being an armchair quarterback and looking back on situations. It’s looking forward that’s difficult in life, isn’t it?” Tingley asked rhetorically.
Tingley also provided a detailed explanation of the issues with the original footings – and solutions.
‘It’s what I needed to hear … and the community needs to hear’
Councillor Norman Mann said, “Thank you, Dr. Tingley, for that response. I think that’s what I needed to hear and obviously I think the community needs to hear as well.”
“We are not here to talk about other buildings. I’m here to talk about the Rogers Arena and getting it opened,” he said.
Parallel work
Tingley explained how extensive structural work has continued inside the arena while the foundation work and investigations have been going on. “The whole time, that’s going on in parallel to upgrade the superstructure of the building to have it ready.”
Cost questions, sourcing questions
Councillor Charles Flintoff inquired about costs related to building heating – to melt snow on the unfinished area of the roof. He also asked why the electrical equipment was not ordered sooner.
Goulding explained that the roof is very slippery and the heating method is the safest way to keep the snow clear so the workers are able to finish the roof. He also said approval of the electrical equipment design was needed before staff could be certain that the ordered equipment would be acceptable to electrical authorities.
Overall project cost questions
Councillor Rick Bull noted, “we’ve gone over our estimate by four or five million already … so, how do we get a general sense of what it’s going to cost us to do all this?”
Goulding described the challenge of providing costing given the circumstances. He also said, “I can tell you we’re not talking about doubling this project value,” and he added, “we’re not adding a tenth of the existing cost to the project."
Next steps
Shoring work is underway to ensure the weight of winter snow loads is distributed on a wide area. Tingley explained this is because of the weak footings, not the strength of the structure.
The electrical equipment is expected in 6 to 8 weeks. This, down from an approximately 40 week timeline.
And the micro pile work will begin in the new year as soon as the contractor is able to remobilize.
‘A lot of good events, a lot of [good] things have happened for this arena’
Summarizing his thoughts, Mayor Wannan said, “A lot of good events, a lot of things have happened for this arena. Very positive things for this community to come together and push for this goal.”
“I would encourage, perhaps, setting maybe a hard target. And that would be, in my mind, mid-August. A very hard target of August with hopefully, a goal of mid-August ice,” he said.