The Catalyst Committee delivers on its top priority. But the other projects get more consultation
City Hall | Paul Dechene
Of the five Catalyst projects that were originally proposed when the Catalyst Committee was struck last July — the downtown arena, the indoor aquatic centre, the modernization of Central Library, the soccer and baseball fields — the aquatic centre was an outlier. City administration had already done a lot of work on the project. They had completed an extensive consultation process and a feasibility study. They had an idea of where they could find a significant chunk of money to pay for it, and there was an impending deadline for when they had to apply for that cash.
In fact, the provincial deadline to apply for Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program funding was March 14, so that the province could compile all the ICIP applications and pass them on by March 31 to the federal government for final approval.
In total, the city hopes to access $128 million for the aquatic centre from ICIP.1 And while there is still a chance that the application will be rejected despite all the work that the city has done on it, Mayor Sandra Masters is hopeful. “The province has been very favourable to the project so we are confident they will send in a vote of confidence for us when it goes into the federal government,” said Masters during a March 8 press conference after city council approved the project.
If this funding comes through and work on the aquatic centre begins, it will be a win for Masters who included the centre as one of the planks in her election platform. “One of the reasons I made that part of my campaign was frustration with plans being performed and not being actioned on. And so, when it made the 2009 – 2010 [Recreation Master Plan] and then the updated 2019 Rec Plan, it seemed to me it required action. I can tell you clearly my fellow councilors were on the same page,” she said at the press conference.
While the final Catalyst Committee recommendation is to keep the indoor aquatic centre at the Sportsplex site,2 one change from last summer when city staff completed the feasibility study is the addition of a geothermal plant which will heat the facility. Of the $128 million the city is applying for, $20 million will go toward construction of this plant. It will be a first of its kind energy project in Saskatchewan and could be a huge step forward for renewable energy in the city.
Brian Brunskill, a geologist who has been working with University of Regina’s Petroleum Research Centre to investigate how to bring geothermal to the aquatic centre, said he was confident that the salty, warm water in the Deadwood Aquifer two kilometres beneath the city will provide a sufficient geothermal resource to heat the centre. The question, he added, is if there will be enough surplus heat generated by the plant that it could be used to heat other buildings such as the Fieldhouse or any future development that occurs on the adjacent Taylor Field lands.
According to Brunskill, we’ll learn geothermal’s potential at this site once we begin to drill some wells there.
Beyond the key benefit of using a renewable resource for a major city facility, adding geothermal to the aquatic centre proposal will significantly reduce the cost of operating the facility over its lifetime. Though it will be more expensive to build than a natural gas system, geothermal heating is expected to cost only about $721,000 a year to operate while natural gas heating would be more than three times as expensive, costing $2.49 million annually. Over the first 50 years of the facility’s life, the city expects to save $57.5 million and produce 95-per cent less carbon dioxide emissions. It also improves the likelihood that the federal government will say yes to the city’s application as we are applying under the green building stream of the ICI Program.3
“We know the inclusion of geothermal is incredibly attractive because we know [the federal government] is very supportive of alternative sources of heating and energy,” says Mayor Masters.
Once the city knows if it has been approved for funding, detailed design work on the aquatic centre will begin immediately. The city will be consulting with user groups and the surrounding community about the specifics of what the facility will look like. Construction is expected to be completed by 2028.
Councillor Bob Hawkins, however, wants to see the indoor aquatic centre open sooner and requested that administration bring forward a plan to complete the project in three years instead of five.
As for the remaining Catalyst projects, their timelines aren’t nearly as rigid, and city council voted to allow Regina residents more time to sit with the Catalyst Committee’s report outlining their recommendations. This is useful as it was a long report that clocked in at over 700 pages when you include appendices, and there were some significant changes proposed from when we last heard from the committee.
Chief among them, the committee recommended adding a new Catalyst project: a non-vehicular trail that would link downtown to the Warehouse District, the REAL District, Wascana Park and the rest of the city’s multi-use trail system. This will take advantage of $3 million in funding the city received from the federal and provincial governments in January.
As we have the money approved for the trail system, it would become the first catalyst priority while the aquatic centre will take number two spot. The modernization of Central Library was designated the third priority while the downtown arena plan was ranked number four.
The committee looked at the outdoor soccer and baseball field projects and determined that they did not provide sufficient economic lift to be counted as Catalyst projects and recommended they be handled through the city’s normal recreation facility plan.
As for the arena, Ward Seven Councillor Terina Nelson expressed concerns about how little support seems to have been expressed through consultation sessions for locating the Brandt Centre replacement in the downtown. She also noted that many of her ward’s residents had been unaware of the Catalyst Committee consultation. As a result, she moved that administration run another survey that would assess public support for putting an arena downtown. That survey is open until March 19 and can be accessed through beheard.regina.ca/catalyst-committee.
Council will debate the Catalyst Committee recommendations related to the downtown arena, Central Library, the non-vehicular trail and the outdoor soccer and baseball fields at their March 22 meeting. ■
1. The aquatic centre money isn’t a straight up gift from the federal government as ICIP funding is cost shared between three levels of government. The federal government will provide 40-per cent of the $128 million, the provincial government 33.3-per cent, and the city 26-per cent.
2. The city is investing $1.4 million in the current Lawson Aquatic Centre to keep it open while the new facility is being built. A requirement of ICIP funding, however, is that the Lawson be decommissioned within five years of the new facility being completed.
3. You may recall that the $128 million of ICIP funding remaining available to the City this year was technically under the transit stream. However, we negotiated an agreement with the provincial and federal governments that we could swap funds between the ICIP’s transit and green building streams. We couldn’t apply to use the transit or green streams to fund sport or culture projects, meaning, until the addition of the geothermal proposal, applying for ICIP funding for the aquatic centre was a bit of a stretch.