By Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

Lethbridge City Council lends its support for 2019 World Men’s Curling Championship bid

Nov 27, 2017 | 4:42 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Lethbridge hosted the Mixed Doubles and Senior World Curling Championships earlier this year, The Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 2007, and World Women’s Curling Championships in 2012.
 
Now, Enmax centre General Manager Kim Gallucci has been given the green light by Council – and $500,000 in potential support –  to bid for the 2019 World Men’s Curling Championships.
 
Gallucci made a presentation to council at its regular meeting Monday afternoon (Nov. 27). The request included $250,000 in ‘in-kind’ support for things like Enmax Centre rental, and another $250,000 in cash support for Curling Canada to help host the event and offset expenses.
 
“Of course we want them [Curling Canada] to advertise.We want them to advertise across Canada and bring people to Lethbridge to spend their money and to help them engage in other things that they need to support transportation, hosting the world delegations at hotels, so there’s a lot of money that goes into other aspects.”
 
The event would include 12 teams of five from around the world. They would play an average of three games a day over a period of nine days. More than 50,000 tickets are expected to be sold during that time.
 
“As popular as the Women’s Worlds was,” Gallucci explained, “the Men’s Worlds is even more. People are very familiar with the teams. They’re very familiar with the competition… it’s a great event it’s top sport activity.”
 
While a number of councillors expressed their approval as something that would “put Lethbridge on the map” and would continue to make the city a more attractive place to live, Councillor Jeffrey Coffman was concerned that no actual budget for the event was presented.
 
There was also some confusion as to where the money would come from.
 
Council was told by administration, that all but $83,000 of the current one million dollar Community Major Event Grant Fund spanning from 2015-2018 was already used up.
 
Any money for the 2019 event would have to come from the 2019-2022 Community Major Event Grant Fund. However there are also  other events already included in that budget.
 
$250,000 was committeed in 2019 and 2020 for the U Sports Men’s National Hockey Championships, if that bid is successful.
 
With the $83,000 rollover, and $500,000 approved for the Men’s World Curling Championship bid, it leaves just $333,000 in the next budget cycle for any future requests.
 
“I have concerns with taking money from a budget cycle that has not yet been approved. However, when we do our capital budget deliberations, we’re doing that for future planning as well. It’s the same group of nine that are going to be sitting here next year debating the operating budget.
 
“We know that this is in the hopper, so it’s a matter of understanding how it’s going to play into it. The real question is what we’re going to be doing with this fund in the next cycle.”
 
Coffman suggested it would also be a good idea to have an organization or someone on staff putting all of the events the city believes it can attract on a calendar and coming up with a strategy based on the community, facilities and funding available.
 
Gallucci says the Enmax Centre bid must be in by Dec. 1 and they should know by the end of the month whether they get it.
 
If the bid is successful, it’s projected to bring in nearly $7.5 million in economic activity to the city.