STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.

Broader vision needed to realize events centre potential in Nanaimo, expert says

Feb 28, 2017 | 4:21 PM

NANAIMO — Will an $80 million events centre spark revitalization of Nanaimo’s downtown waterfront?

It’s a claim often attached to projects similar to what is being proposed in the harbour city and something the City of Nanaimo sees as a viable reality. However, stacks of research and studies show the economic impacts rarely live up to the hype.

An events centre itself will not attract private investment because “it’s not a big enough engine of economic development,” according to Roger Noll, a retired professor of economics from Stanford University. Noll is a former senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and an expert on the economics of publicly funded sports venues.

“However, if the plan was that the city of Nanaimo is going to have a complete plan, a multi-use, decades long redevelopment for the entire area where the city itself is actively involved in not only building the arena but in building other things as well, then that could work,” Noll said. “But it wouldn’t be because the arena itself was the generator of economic development, it was because all the other things as well as the arena were synergistic and caused a redevelopment of the entire area.”

Noll told NanaimoNewsNOW an events centre can transform an industrial area into something more vibrant, but only if the facility is heavily used and constantly drawing large crowds of people.

“If you want to have a comprehensive redevelopment of that part of the city, do it that way, don’t expect that doing one thing is going to be sufficient,” Noll said.

He said people should not base their decision on whether the proposal will “make you rich or the city rich, because it’s not.

“It’s whether this is aesthetically what you want to be doing. Think of this more as building a city park or library, not as a business investment, because it really isn’t a good business investment. Instead it’s something that should be evaluated on what it contributes to the community overall as an end in itself.

“If you’re only going to do one thing, and you hope that’s going to cause more economic development to follow, you don’t do it with a sports facility.”

City of Nanaimo chief financial officer Victor Mema said he “couldn’t agree more” with that comment, adding that’s “exactly the case” the city has made.

“You’re looking at what the economic impact is. What the contribution to quality of life would look like…the city is not in the business of making profits…we provide amenities that improve quality of life, amenities that we can build around in collaboration with the private sector for redevelopment of areas,” Mema said.

The city is not taking a “build it and they will come” approach, Mema said. “This is planned, focused development…if we build this facility there, there’s things that can happen around it. There’s already conversations about plans that are underway with or without this project.”

Mema pointed to the passenger ferry as an example of another proposed project for the area that would lead to a need for mixed-use residential housing and storefronts. He said there are already incentives to encourage new hotels, but from what he’s seeing there is probably going to be “an over-subscription” on hotels, so the City may have to look at incentivizing some other development.

When asked about the seemingly overwhelming case studies that show sports and entertainment venues don’t spur economic growth in cities, Mema said he would want to see the examples given. “We are taking a proactive, engaged, focused look at what will go down in that area and we will pursue those investments with the private sector.”

Mema said it’s a “mischaracterization” that building the events centre on the downtown waterfront “abandons” the vision created by the South Downtown Waterfront Initiative.

A consultants report states the waterfront location of the project “will be compatible with the extension of the public waterfront to the south. The waterfront trail will as well be extended to the south. There are additional lands to the south west…that can be used as deemed appropriate by the City.”

However, at least one community group, the South End Community Association, has already voiced their opposition to the waterfront location. Board member Sydney Robertson told NanaimoNewsNOW in December the guiding plan for the city-owned waterfront land was being ignored.

While the final 32-page guiding document for the future of the south downtown waterfront didn’t include any specific mention of a multiplex being a good option for land use, it also didn’t say that one doesn’t belong there.

The report called for the creation of a place “where street level activity is encouraged, and where mixed use developments frame the street in a modest scale that fits Nanaimo and the site.”

There’s also mention of land use that attracts the largest number of people and jobs to the area.

Nanaimo residents will go to the polls March 11 in a referendum to authorize the city borrowing $80 million to build an events centre that would host a Western Hockey League team.

 

dominic.abassi@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @domabassi