City seeks new Sportsplex ad deal

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This article was published 19/07/2021 (1740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the City of Brandon gets what it wants in response to a tender it posted last week, a new company could take charge of advertising at the Sportsplex.

First posted last Friday, the tender asks for bids for a company to take over handling and selling ads inside the Sportsplex for the next five years, as well as for the ice resurfacing machine that maintains the ice arena.

Advertisement locations within the facility are located on the wall in the ice arena as well as on the boards, glass, arena sign, score clock in the concourse and on the wall of the pool.

While the winning bidder will control what ads are placed inside the facility, the city will maintain the right to place warnings and informational signs in the Sportsplex and use unused ad space for city business until the contractor requires the use of that space.

If for some unforeseen reason the city needs to close the Sportsplex for more than 28 days, the winning contractor will be compensated.

Additionally, if a provincial or federal event is being held at the Sportsplex, the advertisements must be removed or covered if required by the event.

The city reserves the right to extend the agreement for an additional five years if the contractor agrees.

Bidding on the tender ends on July 30 at 5 p.m.

Another open tender from the city would finally see repairs on a stone fence at a heritage site get completed.

In 2016, an inspection of the stone fence located along Princess Avenue between 17th and 18th streets as well as the west side of 17th Street between Princess and Rosser avenues showed that several segments needed to be repaired or risk collapsing.

Now owned by the city, the fence was built in the early 1900s by a stonemason hired by the then-owner of the property, Charles Whitehead, who was the president of The Brandon Sun’s board of directors.

It took four years for the fence to be built, according to the page for the fence on heritagebrandon.ca. 

Later on, the property was passed down to Whitehead’s daughter Margaret, who in turn passed it down to her son, John Mitchell.

Since then, the property was parcelled into lots, and what remains of the fence sits on property owned by seven different people.

 

It was named a municipal heritage site in 2003.

Phase one of the fence’s repair came in 2017 after the city set aside $25,000 in its annual budget.

In 2018, the city received a $10,000 grant from Manitoba Sport, Culture and Heritage, which was combined with $30,000 from the municipal coffers to complete phase two of the repairs.

Earlier this year, the city applied for another heritage grant and set aside $40,000 in the 2021 capital budget to pay for the third phase of repairs.

According to the tender documents, phase three will focus on a section of the fence along 17th Street.

The city wants the winning bidder to deconstruct a 14-metre-long section of the fence and then reconstruct it with a reinforced concrete strip footing.

The contractor must also strive to match the aesthetics of what remains of the original stone fence in the reconstruction, including replacing missing stones with ones chosen from a quarry that match the physical characteristics of the original stones.

Once the winning bidder is announced, they are asked to finish the project by the preferred date of Sept. 30. Tender applications close Wednesday at 5 p.m.

A third tender finds the city looking to enter a five-year agreement for armoured vehicle service.

The city wants to find a company to pick up deposits from Brandon City Hall’s finance department and the A.R. McDiarmid Civic Complex and deliver them to the Bank of Montreal on Rosser Avenue.

City hall deposits will be picked up every day, while deposits at the civic complex will be once a week on Thursday.

The proposed agreement would be in effect from Sept. 1, 2021 to Aug. 31, 2026.

According to a tender document, the city hall deposits averaged $106,000 in cheques and $8,000 in cash from January to April 2019, $546,000 in cheques and $13,000 in cash from May to June 2019 and $97,000 in cheques and $5,000 from July to December 2019.

At the civic complex, weekly deposits averaged $21,000 in cheques and $500 in cash for all of 2019.

This last tender stops accepting bids on July 30 at 5 p.m.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark