City council in the 'Hat recently voted to free up $1.3 million from its capital budget to facilitate design/build proposals from qualified bidders for the project.
This phase of the process is expected to last about nine months.
Its next step would be to move ahead with actual construction management for the project.
A new event centre/arena has been on Medicine Hat's wish list for several years. A site was selected in the far northwest corner of the city on the north side of the South Saskatchewan River a few years ago. The centre is envisioned for the Box Springs commercial/industrial area, and it would be easily visible from the Trans-Canada Highway.
At one point the event centre was tagged at about $94 million, with that estimate and a lack of committed provincial and federal funding leaving the city short of what it needed to proceed.
Whether federal funding is any closer right now remains to be seen. Medicine Hat's mayor, Norm Boucher, ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in the last federal election, something that likely didn't put the city's priorities much higher with the Harper government.
The event centre/arena is seen not only as a new home for the Medicine Hat Tigers junior hockey team in the 'Hat, but for larger conventions, trade shows and concerts in the southeast Alberta service centre.
While Medicine Hat has struggled to move ahead with the events centre, Lethbridge, its southern Alberta rival, has been able to spend close to $34 million on upgrades to the city's Enmax Centre, built as the Canada Games Sportsplex back in 1974.
from Western Investor April 2012
