Building new downtown arena a ‘no-brainer’

So here we go again with the age-old debate of renovating the old arena or building a new arena.

Heard the bid to renovate the old one would cost the city $30 million, while building a new one would cost $50 million.

To me, this is a no-brainer. Why would the city even contemplate renovating the old one. We all know from experience when you renovate, there is always unforeseen circumstances.

For $20 million more, we can build something to not only accommodate the hockey team and fans, but we can also build something that could promote bigger and known bands to come here, build lots of seating and parking which would then in turn bring tourist from other cities to our city, which brings revenue to our city.

One of my ideas which I wrote to our district councillor a while back was to get rid of three problems at the same time.

Continue Barrydowne, and have it follow alongside the CN track down towards Hanmer/ Val Caron area, which would create less traffic, leaving the downtown area and clogging Lasalle and Notre Dame. Then build the new Sudbury arena off that road.

We could build a huge arena with all the parking we want that would be centrally located.

Eric Paquette
Azilda