A cheap solution for recreation woes
Published Wednesday July 1st, 2009
SAINT JOHN - Guy Barbara believes he has a solution to the city's ice suface and recreation woes.
He thinks that a building similar to the new city salt and sand shed on the west side could be erected beside arenas and then hooked up to existing ice-making plants.
The Charles Gorman Arena is one that he feels would be perfect for such structures. He believes there's room for a trio of such structures that would house hockey, field sports and tennis.
The buildings, which are steel ribs covered in fabric attached to a concrete foundation and half wall, cost in the area of $600,000. The fabric could eventually be removed and the concrete foundation and walls could be part of a permanent structure.
Barbara, co-owner of the Hotel Courtenay Bay and the Fort Howe Hotel, is an outside-the-box thinker who doesn't shy away from the unorthodox. While the idea makes perfect sense to Barbara, he said the city has shown little interest because it's just not grandiose enough.
"Saint John can't afford grandeur," Barbara said. "They should settle for what they can afford now and then when they have the money, do it."
Almost a month ago, Barbara met with a city official - he wouldn't say who - to discuss the idea, but the idea seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"City management is rather big, in Saint John," Barbara said.
City hall, he said, isn't interested in such a low-tech, low-grade solution. Taking the idea one step further, Barbara sweetened the deal by offering to lease some of the buildings from the city and then charge subsidized usage rates.
"I'm guaranteeing to rent one of them. If necessary, I'll go out and find the person to rent the other one so it costs them (city) nothing."
The idea, he said, will cost him money.
"I do many things that I don't make money on." But he believes the structures and what they contain could be operated close to break-even.
Barbara is urging people to investigate for themselves.
"They're unbelievable," he said of the structure on Manchester Avenue.
"The beautiful thing is how simple it is."
On Monday, Quispamsis broke ground on a $21-million recreation complex. Barbara, who lives in Rothesay, said that might make sense in the valley where the population is increasing, but it makes no sense for Saint John with a crushing debt load, high tax rate and far less potential for growth.
"Just look at what gets done here and how slowly it gets done," Barbara said. "There's a lot of us that have ideas that can never get launched. So maybe the citizens of Saint John need to understand that there are other options."
Seeing the medical program at UNBSJ facing an uncertain future, he announced he had bought the Key Industries building in the north end and then offered the $475,000 structure to the province for the medical education program. The province declined the offer, but some believe that Barbara's offer nudged the province enough to create a new home for the medical program at Tucker Park.
Barbara believes that many Saint Johners have simply become apathetic about the whole issue.
"In any other city, I would say the citizens would have revolted against council, against the mayor, against management."
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Who?
How many times have we heard "it's for the kids"? Well, it's not and sooner or later people may come to realize this big lie for what it is.
Unfortunately, in 'public'service, rational, creative business types like the "Guy Barbaras" are few.
Quispamsis may be growing but so is the need for a variety of sports, which will now suffer because scarce funds will be absorbed by the QPlex, just as scarce funds will be used up by the Peel project.
It's ironic that a paper, who is championing lower taxes for SJ, encouraged higher taxes in Quispam. If this paper had taken a critical look at the QPlex from the start, it wouldn't be happening.
The two problems here, the system and the media, and neither are accountable, so where does the public turn? It's not just SJ people who are apathetic.
I do like his thinking, though: we need creative thinking and cost-effective solutions.