Arena repair bill pegged at $750,000

JOHN THOMPSON

A permanent fix for Iqaluit’s Arctic Winter Games arena will cost $750,000, city councilors heard this week.

That means when past efforts to assess and fix the arena are included, the city will have spent over $1 million since 2003 on the arena, which has been sinking into the tundra for years.

The city’s finance director, who is putting together next year’s budget, says that money could be hard to find.

“With the GN agreement, we don’t really have $750,000 to spend in arena repairs,” John Hussey said, referring to the city’s agreement with the Government of Nunavut that funds much of the city’s infrastructure projects. “It’s already been allocated.”

“Where’s this money coming from? It seems like we always go back to the taxpayers.”

Councilors and city staff heard a report on the arena from Terry Gray from FSC Architects & Engineers on Dec. 6.

The city hired the firm this summer to come up with a plan for a permanent fix. This fall they removed the rink’s concrete slab to discover “large voids” beneath the concrete, where water had washed away the sandy foundations. FSC then commissioned AMEC to drill beneath the surface.

They found a boggy mess of mud and rock that continues for 35 feet until you reach bedrock. In some spots, they found two to three feet of standing water, with no runoff.

“Probably the worst conditions you could find,” Gray said.

“We’ve basically got a streambed at that one point where it’s failed.”

He recommended building a new foundation, supported by steel pipes – a project that Gray estimates would cost $750,000.

The work could be done in one year, with a new foundation started in March, and the rest of the work done after sealift.

This should provide a final fix – but shifting will continue until rock and debris currently afloat in a soupy mix comes to rest against bedrock, which could take years.

“I’d hate for us to put something in, join it all up and put it in, and then find out there’s a drop another four feet further,” the city’s chief administrative officer, Ian Fremantle, said.