By Lara Fominoff @LaraFominoff on Twitter

Exhibition Park receives $1.1 million from province’s C.A.R.E.S. Program

Jan 19, 2018 | 3:35 PM

LETHBRIDGE – It’s the largest award ever given out, by the Alberta Government’s Community and Regional Economic Support program.

Environment Minister Shannon Phillips announced Friday (Jan. 19), that Exhibition Park will receive $1.1 million to match the City of Lethbridge’s CIP funding of $1.1 million last spring.

The money will be used to move the Exhibition Park trade and convention centre project from a conceptual plan, to having detailed designs making it “shovel ready.” But some major pieces of the process remain: how, when and where funding can be secured for the actual structures.

Exhibition Park CEO Rudy Friesen says the Park’s Board of Directors will meet in early February to decide what the next series of steps will be.

“There’s still a lot of things at play here,” he says. “I think what was important when we talked to the city and to the province was if we can take this next step, then when funding becomes available for major infrastructure projects, then we’re ready to go. This has been defined as a priority by the city and by the province.”

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Having said that, he adds, one of the conversations Exhibition Park needs to have with both of those levels of government includes when they will begin work on the detailed plans.

“You can’t have this work done, and then put it on a shelf for six years, and then bring it back down and have it ready, because it will have expired. It will have lived past its useful life. So that has to be a big piece of how we move forward.”

To that end, Mayor Chris Spearman has acknowledged that there is no money at this time to fund the construction of a new trade and convention centre. That’s why he says it’s so important the provincial government continue its Municipal Sustainability Initiative.

“The City gets $17 million a year from that currently. If we’re able to accumulate that money for three, four, five years, it’s going to really help with the construction costs of major projects in the City of Lethbridge.”

He says without that funding, there would certainly be some concerns.

“Our message to the provincial government is MSI funding is very important to the City of Lethbridge and to all municipalities. It allows us to select our local priorities and to finance them. And projects move forward a lot more quickly when you can give money to municipalities on a per capita basis the way the existing program works.”

In the last year alone, Friesen said numerous conventions and trade shows were turned away because there was simply no place to house all the businesses that wanted to take part, or the facilities weren’t adequate.