Football and soccer athletes in Essex are awaiting an engineering review of the condition of Essex Memorial Arena before submitting a business proposal to lease the city-owned facility.
The Essex Ravens Football Club in its short 17-year history has grown considerably and needs a permanent facility for off-season training, club president Glen Mills said. By next summer the club will have seven teams for children aged 11 to 19.
“If you want to be successful, we have to do off-season training,” Mills said. “You can’t sit around and do nothing.”
It’s the same story for the Harrow Hurricanes soccer club. While the Ravens rent school gyms for winter training, the soccer group finds space at indoor recreation centres in Windsor and space is in high demand, Mills said.
The two organizations would like to rent Memorial Arena, which is being decommissioned this spring as the Town of Lakeshore will no longer need to cost-share the facility with Essex after its new triple pad arena opens in the fall. Mills said the athletic groups want to rent the space at “no cost to the taxpayers.”
The football group made a similar proposal three years ago when the double-pad Essex Civic Centre opened, but was outmaneuvered by Lakeshore, which needed the ice time for its community. Three years ago, town staff insisted the Memorial Arena would need about $1 million in roof and facility repairs. Mills said the repair estimates are inflated.
“We don’t want to put money into the structure,” Coun. Morley Bowman said. “Until we know (the condition of the building), you can’t put a proposal together. It’s sort of in limbo.”
Mills anticipates the operating costs for the facility would be only a fraction of what the town pays now because the building would no longer house ice. Mills estimated the cost to operate Memorial Arena would drop by about 80 per cent to run a dry facility. In its preliminary 2014 budget, the town estimated expenses of $117,536 for the building.
Coun. Randy Voakes said council needs more information before it can make a decision.
“Once a structural study is completed, we’ll have a true understanding of the condition of the arena,” Voakes said. “Once we know that we can work details out with the Ravens, then it could be a simple takeover.”
If the Ravens assume responsibility and cost of running the arena, Voakes said, it would save the town the almost $200,000 it planned to spend to demolish the facility.
“I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater,” Voakes said. “If it makes sense to do (a lease), then at the end of the day, the taxpayers can’t be on the hook. That’s it. That’s the bottom line.”
Mills had plans to rent the facility to groups beyond football and soccer. He said the space could have batting cages, lacrosse and seven-on-seven football teams.
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