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