City to hold public consultation on arena restoration

"What we want to hear are residents' concerns about these things — what ideas they have about them — before we get into the real planning of it," Mayor Karin Marks said during Monday's city council meeting.

The consultation meeting is open to all Westmount residents.

Since 1999, Westmount has been planning to replace its current arena, which dates from the 1950s. The project is one of several building restoration projects that were started in the late 1990s, including the refurbishing of the public library, Victoria Hall and the lawn bowling clubhouse.

However, when the forced mergers arose, the arena project was postponed. When the municipal crisis was finally resolved with Westmount's demerger, the City emerged with a much higher load of debt, making the arena project impractical.

Marks said Westmount has now begun the early planning stages for a renewal of the existing arena and pool facility.

"Eventually, we will hire professionals and we'll look at preliminary options," she said. "But before we get started, we want to have some feedback from the community."

According to Marks, the City is looking at the likelihood of rebuilding the arena, but with two full ice rinks to accommodate the hockey and skating programs, and an outdoor pool to respond to growing needs. There will also be space for the Tag Teen Centre, a food concession and a few other facilities.

Marks said a second consultation will follow the April 12 meeting. That one would probably be in the form of a poll sent out to residents to inform them of the costs and the impact on their taxes. "While this is a consultation where we're talking about the facility we intend to build — and its various options — the second one will be really a consultation more concretely on whether we have the general support of the community to go ahead and do this, given that it costs so much.

"So we hope that anybody who is interested, either because you are a user or because you think you might become a user of the facility, or because you have ideas that you would like to convey, will come out and participate in this …

"An awful lot of people have been commenting on the need for this kind of facility in this community," Marks added. "We want to do it, and we want to do it right, and we want to do it with a lot of community support. It's an opportunity for us to hear the comments from people who will be participating that day."