A rendering of the multiplex and arena concept exterior. (City of Meadow Lake website)

By Angela Brown

Capital project

Meadow Lake’s new arena and multiplex to include event centre

Feb 20, 2024 | 5:12 PM

The City of Meadow Lake is seeing progress on work underway for the new arena and multiplex facility being built.

The site will now include space for an event centre or civic centre, as approved by council recently.

The civic centre is a type of meeting hall. While the city currently has an existing civic centre, it’s old and in need of repairs.

“Our original plan was to have a sports lounge in the upper level,” Mayor Merlin Seymour said. “But we have changed things around over the last little while. We did approve instead of a sports lounge, there will be a civic centre in that area. They are just finalizing the drawings. They have cost estimates etc., to convert it over to a civic centre.”

The city originally planned to have a stand-alone civic centre, but because of budget constraints that portion of the project was taken out of the plan. But the executive committee group working on the initiative has come up with a plan to incorporate the civic centre in the arena multiplex.

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“Basically, it’s like a dance hall, or a large meeting room, etc.,” Seymour said.

The whole project construction is moving along well.

“The weather has been very conducive to working on it,” Seymour said. “They [crews] have a lot of the exterior tin work done. The north side is complete. They started on the south side… They’ve done a little bit of work on the back and they’ve got a portion of the roof covered.”

The entire project is expected to be completed by March 2025, to meet the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) grant requirements.

“It’s coming along very nicely,” Seymour said. “It’s a huge facility, and something that will be around for generations within the city. It will be a welcome addition to our community, whether it be the city, or the RM, or surrounding communities that are going to be able to use this.”

The total budget for this jointly-funded project is currently at $51.83 million, with support from the federal government (up to $14,932,023) and the province (up to $12,442,108).

As well, the RM of Meadow Lake contributed just over $2.3 million in funding to help with the cost of new field house as part of the project. The city will need to come up with just over $7 million for the remainder of this portion.

Anyone interested in looking at some diagrams, photographs and layouts of the entire Meadow Lake Recreation and Civic Centre facility, can visit yourmeadowlake.ca .

“Have a look at the website; all the information is there,” Seymour said. “I’m really excited about this whole facility.”

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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @meadowlakeNOW