Forum:
On Wednesday, Council resumed budget deliberations with a look at the capital budget and I’m fairly alarmed at where Mayor Fillmore wants to take us regarding the Halifax Forum project.
The Forum is a multi-use facility that includes two ice surfaces, one of which has arena seating, and community space. It’s more than just an ice rink. Unfortunately, the Forum is in really bad shape. Its roof is failing, the walls are crumbling, its mechanical systems are at the end of their life, and the floor under one of its ice surfaces is heaving. There is virtually nothing that is in good condition. HRM has been developing a plan/project to address the Forum’s issues since the early 2010s. Building public infrastructure is a long multi-year process! Here’s some of the key milestone decisions along the way that have spanned multiple Councils:
- Long-term Arena Strategy recommended the Forum project as HRM’s top priority
- 2012-2016 Council turned down potential partnerships with DND and the universities in favour of a stand-alone HRM project at the Forum site, but also directed that the Dartmouth Four Pad go first
- Concern around escalating cost had the 2016-2020 Council direct staff to investigate potential partnership opportunities with the private sector
- 2020-2024 Council accepted the staff conclusion and Colliers study that there were no opportunities to partner with the private sector (the private sector didn’t want to partner to build a new Forum, but would have bought the land), and that HRM should retain the site for public use
- 2024-2028 Council facing all the price escalations from the pandemic and recognizing the absolutely poor condition of everything at the Forum directed staff to investigate eliminating efforts to preserve the building’s heritage
It has been a long-road to get to where we are now spanning four Councils!
Given that public infrastructure projects spillover multiple years, everyone in office, to some degree, is inheriting decisions from past Councils. By necessity, everyone is building upon the work that has already been done since no one is ever around long enough to fully see something through. David Hendsbee is the only Councillor that has been in office since the beginning of the Forum discussion! The danger in such long timelines is that if everyone reinvents the wheel every four years we spend lots of money and never ever get anything done. Just look at the last several decades of transportation planning in Toronto or Calgary for lots of examples of the danger! We don’t have a subway or an LRT in Halifax to perpetually rethink so we expend our rethink energy on the Forum instead. Everyone always has some other idea as to how to fix the problem.
So what’s the Mayor’s rethink? The Mayor, like many, isn’t comfortable with the Forum project’s $126 million cost. He wants to reverse course and find a new site for the Forum so that the existing land can be sold to offset project costs. He has indicated he envisions some sort of partnership with the private sector or other orders of government, but has provided no details. He has not offered Council a single scrap of new information that didn’t already exist.
If Council votes to defund the Forum project in March and abandons the current plan, it will be many more years before a replacement facility can be built. HRM would need to find another site for the Forum, of which, there are next to none on the Peninsula (with about 100,000 people the Peninsula needs ice and community space, we can’t reasonably just move it all to Burnside). If HRM did find another site on the Peninsula and the municipality did end up in a partnership with the private sector, we would need to negotiate that. HRM has no experience in these kinds of arrangement making the odds of that being issue free and quick exceedingly low. If the idea is to revive a partnership with DND or a university that to would be a complex undertaking. It’s unclear what opportunities, if any, exist.
So if Council follows the Mayor’s lead, we would basically be starting over. The Mayor’s proposed change will set the Forum project back years, maybe even a decade! The Bedford Ferry is now two years off schedule due to land acquisition. That’s just land, not a complex partnership deal. The Mayor has said his motion isn’t about walking away from the Forum project and he might genuinely mean that, but it is very much hitting snooze for a very long time, which at a certain point, amounts to the same thing.
So what are the implications of further delay? Well costs aren’t going to go down. Construction inflation isn’t as bad as it was, but it hasn’t gone away. Building something in the mid-2030s will still cost more than building the current Forum project in 2027-2030. So the Mayor’s roll of the dice is likely to end up snake-eyes when it comes to cost. If there are any potential cost-savings in the Mayor’s alternatives, time will slowly eat away at them.
The other big risk is the Forum is at the end of its life now. We’re one major snow or ice storm away from having to close it because of the condition of its roof. We’ve already had one closure day this season because of roof danger. Remember the horrible winter of 2015 when roofs all around HRM were in danger of collapse? The Halifax Curling Club’s roof partially collapsed under the weight that year. The Forum mightn’t survive another season like that.
If we lose the Forum before we have a replacement facility ready, the result will be extremely disruptive to everyone in HRM who uses an ice surface. In 2022, HRM opted to use the Gray Arena as a temporary homeless shelter, which disrupted the dryland sports activities that happen there. To ensure there was at least one dryland sports location available in the municipality, HRM responded by taking the ice out from one of the rinks at the Bedford Fourpad. The impact of that lost ice was felt by sports groups throughout HRM as ice space was even more intensely rationed than it was before and there was some advance notice it was coming. If we were to lose not only one but two ice surfaces with little notice because of a catastrophic failure at the Forum, every single ice users in HRM would feel the impact to some degree. Significantly delaying the Forum project, which the Mayor’s approach will most definitely do, greatly increase this risk.
The Mayor is asking Council to gamble on both cost and the weather for an alternative approach that HRM has no experience delivering and he has brought no new information to support such a considerable change in direction. I’m being fairly harsh here, but to be fair to the Mayor, his ideas aren’t bad. They’re things that past Councils thought about it and looked into! It’s his timing that is abysmal. His motion would have been a good one back in 2014. We’re just way too far down the road to so dramatically switch gears for a complete unknown based on no new information while our existing facility literally falls down. This is asset management by paralysis.
Generally Council is amendable to requests for information and so we approved the Mayor’s motion 11-5 (myself, White, Hinch, Morse and voted against). We’ll see what happens when Council goes over the budget adjustment list in March and the choice of abandoning the project is truly before us.
Before I wrap up on the Forum, I want to take a moment to address two red herrings that keep coming up in the Forum discussion. The Forum project isn’t more expensive because of heritage. The $126 million doesn’t include heroic heritage measures, like trying to save bricks that are turning into dust. Past estimates indicated the difference between a heritage approach and essentially starting over added about $5 million. Not nothing, but in the scale of a project that is projected to cost $126 million, it’s not a significant cost driver. Heritage isn’t the cause of the Forum’s high cost, it’s the facility itself.
Second, comparing the cost of the Forum to Dal’s new arena (1 ice surface, 900 seats) or the previous HRM four-pads isn’t a valid comparison. The Four-pads were built before the world of construction pricing went bananas and they’re uninspiring utilitarian boxes. They’re not the same project at all. The Forum is an arena with thousands of seats to match and also offers a large amount of community space and public park space. None of these other facilities do that. It’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Bedford Ferry
Just before Wednesday’s meeting wrapped up, Councillor Morse dropped a bombshell, moving a motion to add cutting the Bedford Ferry to the budget adjustment list. The Bedford Ferry has some Forum-like considerations, but it’s also different in some other ways, mainly that we don’t have a building falling down around us and existing programming hanging in the balance! What the Bedford Ferry and the Forum share is ballooning costs.
The Bedford Ferry has increased in cost from $120 million to $269 million. The federal and provincial governments have committed to contributing to the project, offering $155 million and $65 million. HRM’s share, at current estimates would be $40 million, but, like always, the risk of cost escalations falls entirely to HRM. The project is currently delayed by two years while we wait for the Province to deliver on promised land acquisition.
The big issue that Councillor Morse is raising is one of value. The ferry is projected to move 3,000 people a day, which Council felt was a good deal at $120 million, but it gets harder and harder to justify as costs grow. The three orders of government are spending a whack of money on this project. So Councillor Morse is asking whether this still makes sense in comparison to other potential transit projects like bus rapid transit? The Forum like nature of the issue is that Council has already made a decision on this project and we’re well underway in terms of planning.
The substantial funding commitment from the Feds and Province also weighs heavily on the Bedford Ferry. I think it’s unlikely that the Feds and Province would just happily shift the Bedford money over to bus rapid transit. If Council kills the Bedford Ferry, my hunch is we would probably just end up losing that money. It’s harder to quantify, but we would also take a reputational hit with the other orders of government, which might mean we’re less likely to get their support for bus rapid transit.
It’s also not lost on me that the Bedford Ferry is about more than just the 3,000 projected riders that will use it. The project includes an entirely new Halifax Ferry Terminal, which would be important not just for Bedford, but for other potential ferry routes. A ferry to Shannon Park and to Larry Uteck are also part of the Rapid Transit Plan and it’s difficult to see either of those going ahead if the Bedford Ferry doesn’t happen first. Those future ferry projects would be able to tap into the new Halifax Ferry Terminal, making the new Terminal an investment that is ultimately spread amongst multiple ferry lines, not just one.
I will be away tomorrow so I won’t get to vote on whether to add the Bedford Ferry to the budget adjustment list for further consideration in March. I can kind of argue myself in either direction on whether it should be added. The question that Councillor Morse is raising around the value of spending $260 million to move a relatively small number of people is a good one. We very well might get much more bang out of $260 million spent on bus rapid transit at this point, but it’s also likely that this is use it or lose it money. It’s not Bedford Ferry or bus rapid tranist, but likely Bedford Ferry or nothing and demerit points in future funding applications. It’s also true that Bedford Ferry is a key part of an eventual bigger network of ferries. The major risk is that if the ferry’s cost keep growing, since HRM is left picking up all increases alone, we’ll find ourselves in a Windsor Street Exchange type situation where the initial value is just not there anymore. Getting a staff briefing could be worthwhile, but my strong suspicion is that, like the Forum, this is just too far along to turn back now. The downsides of cancelling it likely outweigh any positives. Unless something new comes to light or my assumptions here turn out to be wrong, I don’t see myself voting in March to sink the ferry if it makes it onto the adjustment list.
Thanks for the updates. Without knowing cost or even viability of other rapid transit it seems to make sense to go the expanded ferry option. Either one will require a change in the way people think to get them out of their car.
Going ahead with rebuilding the Forum site seems the best option. Many more people in apartments in the area need green space and facilities like this. Which also means less cars used..
Forget the heritage part of it. A modern new facility with many uses is much more valuable. We are moving ahead, not back.
Demolish the forum and build a modern two pad with community meeting space and move the Centennial Pool there. Sell the Centennial site to offset costs. We don’t need a rink with thousands of seats.
Love those suggestions.
I wouldn’t discount having another music venue besides Metro Centre. Something to be said for a 2-3000 seat multi-purpose arena.
The Forum is an HRM owned asset, its condition is a direct result of those in charge of maintaining it….HRM Councilors and Staff. How do so many other projects get priority over important community places, shame on all Councilors who put their own idealogy ahead of maintaining owned assets and claim to be looking after the interests of residents.
The idea of building a ferry connection to run parallel to shoreline is idiotic and should have never been considered in the first place. Ferries are expensive and inefficient, and making them electric only makes things worse. Last I heard 5 ferries were needed because for every vessel moving another had to be changing. HRM NEEDS TO CREATE COMMUTER RAIL SYSTEM. The tracks are already there! Yes, It will take a lot of political will to make a deal with CN on sharing some of them. Or funding to add onto what’s there, even if it means infilling or expropriation. Whatever it takes, it has to be done. But let’s face it: the main reason it isn’t happening is likely why the big transportation projects were never finished in the 70s (like northwest arm bridge connecting dunbrack to south end). Extra noise and traffic would not be welcomed by the affluent residents of the south end. People tend to forget (or never learned) that rail is what allowed us to settle and develop this continent. And if you look around the world 150 years later, it is still the most effective way to deal with transportation issues. Meanwhile in Canada we keep tearing up tracks and turning them into gravel highways for people to walk on. Great idea for those who are not spending 2h+/ day commuting to work and have time to do so. I hope people in the city hall wake up soon!
I am still want an answer on Sidewalk clearing