About Forty People Attended A Memorial Arena Task Force Meeting In Goderich On Monday

by Bob Montgomery

Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet chaired a Task Force Meeting in Goderich on Monday morning to determine the future of the Memorial Arena.

Bazinet says the arena, that hasn’t had ice since it was taken out in 2017, is more then seventy years old. A motion passed by Goderich council pointed to aging infrastructure, lack of long term investment and financial constraints, and the need to address some safety and accessibility concerns, and resulted in the arena being closed until further notice. Bazinet says the terms of reference for the Memorial Arena Task Force is to come up with a vision. What do they want the Memorial Arena to look like, and whether it's the building that's currently in place or a new facility. That process will involve public consultation, similar to what they had with their downtown infrastructure project. They've asked staff to look at hiring a consultant who can help them work their way through that process.

Bazinet says they need some type of design or conceptual drawing to present to people and they have to have a cost estimate to give people an idea of how much money would be involved. They would like to come up with a facility that will last another seventy years. So far, they have several options ranging from keeping the facility they have now, with major renovations, to demolishing the current facility and build something new that would be more up to date and energy efficient. But, they need to have a cost estimate in front of them before they can make any decisions, and they also have to keep in mind it is a memorial building and there's a lot of emotional attachment for a lot of the community.

Bazinet says the meeting went very well. People were given the chance to ask questions, and committee members have agreed to meet every second Monday for the rest of the year. They will eventually host open-house forums where people can share their ideas about what they'd like to see because the end result should be something that everyone can use on a daily bases. When the Memorial Arena was last in operation, it was doing so on a 130-thousand dollar annual deficit. Bazinet recognizes that recreation usually does operate at a deficit, but in this case they don't just want to create a recreational facility, they want something that everyone can use on a daily basis for a variety of activities.