City staffers may get booted from sweet corner offices at the Essar Centre

Six city offices in the Essar Centre's southwest corner may be converted to box seats

2014-02-21 Essar Centre Brad Jacobs Gold Medal Win KA Essar Anniversary

FILE PHOTO: Cheering crows at the Essar Centre. Kenneth Armstrong/SooToday

Essar Centre Manager Robert Santa Maria and other city employees may be about to lose their coveted offices with suite-level windows overlooking the Sault's most popular sports and entertainment venue.

Mayor Christian Provenzano and deputy chief administrative officer Tom Vair say a half-dozen city offices in the Essar Centre's southwest corner are being eyed with a view to converting them to box seats.

"We use a good chunk of that space for office space," said the mayor. "So the suggestion was we should investigate moving those city employees to less-prime space and looking at the cost of turning that space to box space."

"Initial estimate is we could fit six boxes into that space," added Vair, who said there are currently 10 to 16 people on the waiting list for suites.

The city is contacting them this week to confirm that they're still interested.

Provenzano and Vair revealed the office conversion proposal this week as City Council was discussing a resolution from Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker and his Ward 6 counterpart Ozzie Grandinetti, calling for additional box seats that were designed into the original structure but never completed.

"Essar Centre box seats have been sold out since the Essar Centre was built in 2006," the two councillors said.

"Funding may be available through provincial or federal programs to assist with the cost of completing the already-framed-in box seats."

Shoemaker and Grandinetti convinced council to direct staff to prepare a plan for developing additional box seats and to investigate whatever potential funding sources might exist.

Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland said the city looked into completing the box seats five or six years ago, but the cost was estimated at $5 million to $6 million for 10 or 12 boxes,

"One of the main reasons we didn't go ahead with this is we couldn't get the Greyhounds on board," recalled Councillor Grandinetti.

"If I remember right, the main cost for this was you had to take all the seating out, build all the concrete stairs and the structure. I believe the scoreboard had to come down, rip half the roof off to get the concrete in there," Grandinetti said.

Ward 4 Councillor Rick Niro pointed out that $5 million or $6 million might be better spent on renovating or replacing the W. J. McMeeken Centre.

Councillor Butland agreed, pointing out that even a $6 million upgrade to the Essar Centre and 75 or 80 more people in box seats wouldn't guarantee any more sports or entertainment events.

"We have the best junior hockey team in Canada," Butland said. "And we sell 3,600 seats. It's not a sell-out at this point."

"McMeeken is in dire straits. Who's going to benefit most?" Butland asked.

Sault Summit

In other news, City Council agreed this week to invest up to $20,000 in a Sault Summit networking event for expatriates to be held in Toronto.

The idea was developed about 18 months ago by Ward 1 Councillor Paul Christian when he heard the SooBoys/ SooConnected group had stopped organizing its charity golf tournament that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sault Area Hospital.

With help from Ward 2's Sandra Hollingsworth, Christian has been working on a half-day workshop and networking event with an associated web platform.

The initiative is intended to:

encourage mentoring or partnering with Sault Ste. Marie businesses
help recruit talent to fill high-level job vacancies
uncover new ideas for collaboration
develop a new Sault Ste. Marie alumni organization
advance community promotion and awareness

Christian pitched the idea successfully to Richard Nino, a former Saultite who's executive vice-president of Fiera Capital Corp., where he's responsible for the investment management firm's U.S. business development and chairs the company's European division.

The event is tentatively planned for April 21, 2018, at Branksome Hall, a private JK-to-12 girls' school in Toronto headed by Karen Jurjevich, another Sault expat.

"When we pitched this idea to her, she offered her facility," Christian said.

"The event is not intended to be a one-off. We're hoping it's the genesis for more dialogue, events and planning initiatives in the future," he said.

About 50 attendees are expected at the inaugural event.