Jeff Norburn, the Director of Community Services, says the new arena ended up costing $20,706,710.33 to the penny.
And depending on how you look at it, it may or may not be slightly over budget.
Mayor Bob Simpson…
“I believe that we cut the contingency almost fully in half of what a normal contingency would be for a project of this order of magnitude, so you’re right, this would have been well absorbed within that proper contingency and that’s a factor of it being over budget by .5 percent.”
The contingency ended up being just under 246 thousand dollars.
City Councillor Shushil Thapar, while saying he is proud of the new arena, also noted that the cost of the facility went up substantially over the years…
“When I was first elected that project was on the books and we needed a replacement at that time, 16 years ago. At that time we were looking at 5 to 6 million dollars. The only thing I would like to say to the people is we can drag any project to 20 years. The only thing is, it’s going to cost four more times.”