By: Nick Liard

In perhaps one of the most important nights in Sudbury’s history, city council voted 10-2 in favour of the Kingsway for a new event centre.

The downtown option came first and the vote resulted in 6-6 tie meaning it was defeated, so the second option was the Kingsway and in that vote some councillors changed their tune.

Mayor Brian Bigger was one of the six who voted for the downtown site but changed to the Kingsway side.

Ward 6 Councillor Rene Lapierre was also someone who first voted for downtown but says once that was no longer the option, switching was the right thing to do for the city.

Ward 1 Councillor Mark Signoretti and Ward 10 Councillor Fern Cormier were the only ones to vote against the Kingsway.

Ward 3 Councillor Gerry Montpellier declared a conflict of interest at the beginning of the meeting because of his involvement in local motorsports(a component of the True North Strong Kingsway site) which is why there were only 12 votes instead of the normal 13.

Gateway Casino’s recently signed a letter of intent to build a 60 million dollar facility if the event centre goes to the Kingsway, council also heard a similar intent from one of Ontario’s largest hotel builders and operators, Vrancor, who currently operate two Regent Street hotels.

Council’s decision did not sit well with the downtown supporters in the audience including the Chair of the Downtown BIA, Jeff MacIntyre.

MacIntyre says the downtown has had a massive comeback over the last 10-15 years and this is going to really slow them down.

MacIntyre says he understands people want to see things move forward in Sudbury but says with the event centre gone, growth in the downtown core is going to really slow down.

Dario Zulich was not in at the city council meeting but members of the True North Strong Team were.

The normally talkative VP of Marketing and Communications, Andrew Dale was rather quiet after the win.

Dale said he wanted the night to be more about city council and hinted that Zulich may make a statement shortly.

 

Filed under: councillors, downtown-bia, event-centre, kingsway, local-news, mayor-brian-bigger, reaction, sudbury, true-north-strong