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City Government

Phase 2 Feasibility Study

Event Centre

The City of Thunder Bay has recently retained the services of a consulting team to look specifically at the Downtown/Waterfront, Thunder Bay Airport, and Innova Business Park sites as potential locations for the new facility. Work will be ongoing from January to May when a final report will be presented to Council. 

Overview on Phase 2 Feasibility Study Adobe PDF, 3 pages, 699 KB
 

The Team

Led by Conrad Boychuk of CEI Architecture, assisted by Ron Bidulka of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Adam Rose of Thunder Bay’s True Grit Consulting Ltd., and Alun Lloyd of the B.A. Consulting Group, the consulting team will be responsible for:

  • Reviewing the development opportunities for each of the three sites
  • Assessing the economic impact
  • Analyzing the traffic and parking issues, and;
  • Developing an overall conceptual cost estimate for the development of the three sites

The Process

The Consulting Team will undertake the following specific tasks and share their findings with the community through the open house process:

  • Develop an Evaluation Matrix for rating the 3 sites. 
  • Develop an appropriate and supportable Concept Design for each of the three sites.
  • Review the concept designs for each of the three sites to evaluate Revenue-Generating Opportunities.
  • Review the development of each of the three sites to evaluate the overall Economic Impact on the City and District of Thunder Bay as a market area.
  • Develop a Traffic Study assessing the impact of the development of each of the sites in terms of pedestrian, vehicular, and public (present / future) transit. Identify parking goals for each of the three sites. 

Timing

The Detailed Site Analysis, Economic Impact and Conceptual Design report will start the first week of January with a series of kick-off meetings and a review of the three sites. Meetings will be held in Thunder Bay generally every second week. The objective is to have the report completed by early spring. 

The City and their consulting team recognize the high level of interest in this project. For this reason the consulting team will coordinate two open house events. The first, planned for Feb. 29, will outline the work of the consulting team and will include concept designs for each of the three sites, as well as a general commentary on the economic impact, traffic issues, cost implications and site selection criteria for each of the three sites. 

The second open house event will be held in early spring. At this event there will be a recommendation as to a preferred site, a more detailed concept design for that site, an economic impact assessment, a detailed traffic and parking assessment, and an order-of-cost magnitude cost estimate for the overall project.

The completed report will be presented to Council in May.