With the city narrowing in on selecting construction managers for the arena/event centre and Cultural Hub library/art gallery, both municipal projects inch closer toward breaking ground.
Construction is anticipated to begin in Tom Davies Square for the Cultural Hub this autumn, around which time utility companies will be seen digging up the south district of downtown Sudbury to relocate services in preparation for the event centre.
“You won’t see any heavy construction on the new event centre until probably early next year,” city lead of Strategic Services Tony Cecutti told Sudbury.com.
With the city on the cusp of three major tenders for these projects, Sudbury.com sought the latest from the city on where these projects are at and whether they remain on track.
“When you’re running these complex projects, things come at you and you have to deal with them,” Cecutti said.
“Can we complete the bulk of what we intended to do within the time period? Sure, certainly with the event centre we have no concerns at all.”
The library/art gallery project, which will see various municipal services shift from 200 Brady St. to the upper floors of 199 Larch St. to make way for a new main branch library, is more complicated than the new-build event centre, he said.
“It’s likely some portions of that might take longer than anticipated, but the primary objectives we’re confident we can meet in reasonable periods of time.”
The latest of three major tenders whose results have yet to be determined is for the event centre’s construction management.
Six companies put their names forward to manage the construction of downtown Sudbury’s arena/event centre. These companies include:
- Aquicon Construction Co. Ltd. (Brampton)
- Ball Construction Ltd. (Kitchener)
- EBC Inc. (Ottawa)
- EllisDon Corporation (Mississauga)
- PCL Constructors Northern Ontario Inc. (Sudbury)
- SKYGRiD Construction Inc. (Mississauga)
These companies have applied for pre-qualification, with winning proponents able to proceed with a request for proposals process, at the end of which the city will pick a preferred proponent.
The city has undergone a few such requests for pre-qualification processes for the two major downtown projects. This process serves to weed out those proponents who don’t meet minimum requirements early on, which Cecutti said saves them a lot of time and money before digging deeper into an involved and labour-intensive application process through a request for proposals public tendering.
Cecutti said the city should have a construction manager firmed up by sometime this summer.
The $200-million event centre project ($225, including land and money sunk into the since-cancelled Kingsway Entertainment District) is being designed by Toronto-based BBB Architects and Ottawa-based J.L. Richards & Associates Ltd. (they’ve maintained an office in Sudbury since 1974), having been awarded a $7.97-million tender for the work late last year.
The event centre is to include fixed seating for 5,800 people (the existing Sudbury Community Arena has 4,470), including 5,020 in general seating, 500 club seating, loge box seating of 40 and private suites with 240 dedicated seats.
A request for proposal for the centre’s management services closed on March 17, for which both prequalified U.S.-headquartered companies submitted bids, including ASM Global (California) and Global Spectrum Facility Management (Colorado).
The city has yet to issue the results of this tender, which has received pushback in the wake of the U.S. tariffs that prompted the city to add teeth to its non-U.S. procurements, per a successful motion by Mayor Paul Lefebvre. Companies' workforces must now be at least 90 per cent Canadian or non-U.S. based and have an office or production facility in Canada.
These new buy-local provisions won’t be a factor for either of the two prequalified proponents, Cecutti said.
“Every employee will be a local employee, it’s a very local operation and those proponents have Canadian entities that they operate under,” he said. “There’s no concern from a vendor management point of view.”
Cecutti anticipates having the management service tender awarded within the next four to six weeks.
Meanwhile, the city has already prequalified six companies to undertake construction management services for the Cultural Hub at Tom Davies Square project.
This project consists of relocating various municipal offices from 200 Brady St. to the upper floor of the adjoining 199 Larch St. to the north, to make room for a new main branch library and other community services. A new Art Gallery of Sudbury would fill out the bottom four storeys of 199 Larch St.
Prequalified companies include Kitchener-headquartered Ball Construction Ltd., EllisDon Corporation (Mississauga), Percon Construction Inc. (Toronto), PCL Constructors Canada Inc. (Oakville), Pomerleau Inc. (Ottawa) and Aquicon Construction Co. Ltd. (Brampton).
Four of these prequalified companies overlap between both major City of Greater Sudbury projects, including Aquicon Construction, Ball Construction, EllisDon and PCL Constructors.
Cecutti said that he anticipates having a construction manager for the Cultural Hub firmed up within approximately one month.
The Cultural Hub project already has a team of architects working on it, headed by Toronto-based Teeple Architects, in partnership with southern Ontario’s Two Row Architect and Sudbury-based Yallowega Architecture. They presented schematic designs to city council and the public in September 2024.
Cecutti said that he anticipates similar schematic designs to be presented for the event centre project later this year.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.