Sports complex faces $3M shortfall

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This article was published 29/05/2024 (704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Construction of the Maple Leaf Foods Sports Complex could be more than $3 million over budget if the City of Brandon wants to include all items on its wishlist, Brandon City Council heard at a special meeting Monday night.

With Phase 1 of construction on the facility at the corner of First Street North and Veterans Way having been completed last year and the city getting ready to award a contract for Phase 2, it was a good time to update council on the project, general manager of operations Patrick Pulak said.

The total project budget is $16.6 million, with the province contributing $6.64 million, the federal government $3.9 million and the City of Brandon $6 million. Phase 1 cost $6.1 million, leaving $10.5 million for the rest of the work.

Phase 2’s components — including a storage building, irrigation well, consulting fees and a 10 per cent contingency — are expected to cost about $8 million, leaving around $2.5 million for the rest of the work. This work is supposed to be complete by May 30, 2025.

The problem is, the remaining items — construction of the clubhouse, naturalization of the landscaping, more irrigation work, consulting fees and optional items — are estimated to cost around $5.89 million, about $3.37 million over budget.

“I’m not saying that’s what the cost is or how we’re going to fund it — what I’m saying is that if we’re going to do all the items that we envisioned we were going to do, that would be the cost,” Pulak said.

“That said, we’ve been in discussion with finance and the user groups and there are items in there that we can delay or put off.”

That includes delaying Phase 3, which includes optional items at a cost of about $1.16 million.

The clubhouse must be built with two FIFA-sized dressing rooms as specified in the funding agreement with the province and federal government.

Under the city’s sponsorship and use agreement for the sports complex with Assiniboine Community College, washrooms must also be built.

However, Pulak said other items in the clubhouse can be delayed with the intent of finishing them later. Those specifics are still under discussion.

He told councillors he didn’t want them to feel like the city is $3.3 million short because of the potential options to build items in phases as well as the fact that the facility will be operational after Phase 2 is complete.

Contract administrator Stephanie Lynch said the project had been over budget since the beginning, which was why a phased approach was used. However, Phase 1 was under budget and Phase 2 was within two per cent of the original budget.

“With the contracts we’ve actually put out, we’ve done really well,” Lynch said. “It’s just the overall complex as a whole was just high to begin with.”

The figures mentioned at Monday’s meeting do not include the sponsorship money collected from Maple Leaf Foods and Assiniboine Community College. Staff said that money is intended to go toward operational costs, though some consideration is being given to using it for capital costs.

ACC paid $475,000 to secure naming rights for the FIFA-sized field for 15 years as well as preferred access times, while the details of Maple Leaf’s sponsorship of the entire complex have not been disclosed.

The Phase 2 tender closed on May 16, with only Alternative Landscaping submitting a bid. It was worth about $5.9 million to carry out the work. City council will ultimately need to vote on whether to accept that bid.

Phase 1 involved the grading of the site, construction of underground infrastructure, the addition of a stormwater retention pond, site access and internal roads and a parking lot.

Phase 2 will include an irrigation system for the complex, site lighting, FIFA-regulation artificial turf, a cricket pitch with batting cages and some other sports fields.

“This is really what allows the complex to be utilized as we’ve envisioned right from the start,” Pulak said. “Once these get complete at bare minimum, we can begin to utilize the complex.”

A related project separated out as “Phase 2A” has seen the completion of the design work for landscaping outside of the complex’s fields, but the actual work won’t be tendered until either late this year or early 2025.

Pulak’s presentation said this is being worked on separately for warranty reasons.

Another side project to create a storage facility and maintenance yard has also been tendered and the awarding of the contract is pending, though it is not listed on the city’s online tenders page.

According to Pulak, that project was tendered through a contractor hired to help manage the project. Last November, Ledcor Construction Limited was awarded an $86,850 contract to manage the construction of the complex’s clubhouse.

The design of the clubhouse is 66 per cent complete, with the rest on hold “until further direction is provided.”

That’s because the city is looking to use the Assiniboine River as the water source for irrigating the complex, which requires working with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“Which is difficult at best,” Pulak said.

A spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada said they were unable to provide a comment by the Sun’s Tuesday deadline but that they would follow up later this week.

In the meantime, the fields will be irrigated using municipal water at nighttime so that residents’ access to water isn’t impacted. The Wheat City Golf Course also uses the river as an irrigation source.

Coun. Glen Parker (Ward 9) said previous projects using the river as an irrigation source ran into issues dealing with silt, which required pumping river water into a reservoir and letting materials in it settle before using it for other purposes.

Staff said the irrigation intake has a screen on it to filter the water. Using the nearby retention pond as an irrigation source was considered, but it was determined that it wouldn’t replenish quickly enough.

To find a company to manage the operations of the facility, a tender is being worked out to find a third party to handle the work.

Pulak said that negotiations have been underway with the Brandon Youth Soccer Association to potentially hand over ownership of the old Optimist Soccer Park to the city in exchange for a credit toward use of the new fields.

A second agenda item labelled “Budget — Finance” was discussed in an in-camera segment.

Not present at the special meeting were Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 8) and Coun. Tyson Tame (Ward 10).

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