Maria Canton
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Jun 26/00) - Despite a long-time resident's last minute attempt at persuading councillors to change their minds, town council approved a development permit application to build a second arena near the Aqsarniit Middle School.

The arena is needed to host the 2002 Arctic Winter Games (AWG), but Bryan Pearson believes that the new arena should be built as an extension to the existing facilities.

It was only two weeks ago when Pearson saw the boundaries of the proposed arena staked out in the lot next to the property he has held for 40 years.

"My initial reaction was, 'Who will pay for this?' Anyone can build a capital building, it's the operation and maintenance that is extremely expensive," said Pearson, who was an MLA when the original arena was constructed.

"After the games, the requirement for a second arena is practically unnecessary and will be very costly at the expense of the ratepayer."

The alternative he presented to council extended the present facilities in order to share resources needed for maintenance.

"What's the point of having two ice plants, two Zambonis and staffing and maintaining two arenas?

"The arena sits empty for months at a time and the same thing will happen with this one," he said.

Pearson may not be completely out of luck. The approval came with conditions attached, including revisiting two sites already considered and ruled out by the AWG steering committee.

Heading up the steering committee is Dennis Patterson and he says that extending the present facilities was the logical choice when the project started three months ago.

But once they started looking at the site, warning flags began popping up.

"We looked at the current site and presented drawings for it at a public meeting, but once we looked closely at those drawings, three problems became evident," said Patterson, who is also a former MLA.

"There is a water line to be removed for close to $300,000, the ground isn't ideal from a drilling point of view and lastly, there is the possibility that in attaching a new modern building to a 30-year-old building, the fire marshal might require us to bring the existing building up to code."

Patterson said once they added those three factors together, the search for a new site began.

Because the site the committee selected is next to the Aqsarniit middle school and the soon-to-be built francophone school, they approached the Iqaluit District Education Authority, and made an agreement.

"Right now we will basically reconsider the two downtown sites because council asked us to, but we want to start building this summer," said Patterson.

The tentative development approval means that people who have objections have until June 29 to intervene before ground-breaking at the Aqsarniit site begins.