Saskatchewan’s two largest cities are discovering that rising costs are greatly inflating the cost of major projects to replace aging facilities.
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Six weeks after Regina’s central library opened, after a drive by residents to compel city council to establish one, the Regina Cyclone hit the new building on June 30, 1912.
Or, as the Leader-Post explained in its July 1, 1912 edition, “Then the new public library fell a prey to the storm fiend. The walls stand, but the roof was shattered, and the interior badly wrecked.”
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Fortunately, Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American industrial tycoon and philanthropist, who had provided $50,000 to establish the library, paid the $9,500 cost to rebuild.
Carnegie died seven years after the library opened, so he won’t be helping fund a replacement for the current downtown structure, which cost $1 million and opened in 1962 close to where the Carnegie library had been located.
Sadly, too many of today’s tycoons seem more interested in promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories than helping the public stay educated and informed.
Regina’s new central library project now appears in jeopardy after four city councillors signalled they want to rescind approval granted in July for between $92 million and $119 million in city funding. The project is estimated to cost about $125 million.
That potential reversal stems from the rising cost of a replacement for the 49-year-old Lawson Aquatic Centre.
Regina politicians and residents found out last month that the price tag for a new indoor aquatic facility has ballooned by $84.4 million to $245.1 million — a 53 per cent increase.
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Regina city council, which also approved a request this summer to ask the province to increase its debt limit for the second time in less than a year, from $660 million to $890 million, may now be forced to pick between projects.
Saskatoon, meanwhile, built a new aquatic facility, the Shaw Centre, with an Olympic-sized pool, in 2009 for a paltry $47.2 million, a project originally priced at $23 to $25 million.
Construction has started on a new downtown Saskatoon library for the controversial price of $134 million. But the badly mismanaged project, which the library board repeatedly insisted would not be affected by inflation, is proceeding with a reduced version of what was originally planned.
And I stand a better chance of convincing the Saskatchewan Roughriders to let me start at quarterback than the library board does of persuading city council to approve another nickel for the new building.
Renovations are proceeding on Saskatoon’s 49-year-old Harry Bailey Aquatic Centre, which has been closed for more than a year. City council approved spending $6 million more — 25 per cent more than the approved budget — but the work has been severely scaled back from what was originally planned.
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Harry Bailey is now scheduled to open in the spring of 2026, more than a year before the delayed new downtown library is expected to arrive in the summer of 2027.
Yet if you add up the estimated costs of Regina’s aquatic facility and downtown library and Saskatoon’s new library, it totals less than half of the pricetag for a Saskatoon downtown arena district.
Some Bridge City residents may only now be waking up after fainting upon hearing last month that the district, which would be anchored by a new arena and a new or rebuilt convention centre, is expected to cost $1.2 billion.
That’s more than four times the cost of Regina’s Mosaic Stadium, which opened seven years ago.
Saskatoon city council approved further exploring a convoluted and extremely tenuous funding plan last month that would depend on federal and provincial governments each contributing a third.
Saskatoon’s portion would be comprised of the property tax from development near the arena, private funding and possibly a short-term accommodation tax and ticket surcharges. The scheme includes no property tax increases, but skepticism about that is already rising.
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Regina is also considering a new downtown arena, a replacement for the Brandt Centre, which is 11 years older than Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre, and a new baseball stadium.
The vision for those will also collide with the inflation tsunami that is proving to be far more formidable than the cyclone that hit Regina’s library 112 years ago.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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