Sudbury council votes to hear downtown arena presentation

Sudbury City council will be hearing a presentation next month from an architecture firm with a plan for the downtown arena.

3rdLineStudio says it could rebuild the downtown arena, and save the city millions of dollars.

Councillors Geoff McCausland and Mark Signoretti brought forward a motion to council, which would have had city staff evaluate the project and report back to council, even though the city already has plans to build a new arena on the Kingsway.

The plans for the Kingsway Entertainment District (KED)have been held up in legal appeals.

Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann said she was cautiously supporting a motion to hear the group's pitch but not necessarily a motion to have staff evaluate that pitch, before knowing the outcome of the KED legal appeals.

"I'm certainly open to a presentation, but a presentation without obligation for the council is what I'm getting at," she said.

But Coun. Robert Kirwan said the idea shouldn't be considered at all, since council already made the decision to proceed with the KED.

"If the councillor is going to be able to bring in a group on October 6, I'm going to put out an invitation to anybody in the city who wants to make a public presentation on renovating downtown," Kirwan said.

"And I'll be inviting a whole lot of more people to come in and do the same thing, because I don't think we should be allowing this because we already dealt with it."

After discussion at council Tuesday night, which ended without any consensus, McCausland ultimately pulled the motion.

However, council did vote in favour of hearing the presentation from 3rdLineStudio,at its next meeting on October 6th.