Red Lake Mayor Fred Mota took to the stand at provincial pre-budget committee hearings in Kenora this week to champion the town's arena and event centre project.
Mota told the committee that the Regional Events, Arts and Cultural Hub is shovel-ready. The town just needs the province to invest some support.
“We’ve had different pockets of funding to help with an ice machine and smaller venues, but we recently did an assessment of our arena and to refurbish it would be an excess of over $14 million. A 61-year-old building,” Mota said.
Mota explained that the province has been able to provide funding upgrades to aging equipment through the Ontario Trillium Fund. However, the amount needed for the project would involve a commitment from the provincial government.
“We need provincial support in order to move projects such as this to an area where we’re ready to dig. Speaking of being ready to dig, we are. We have been. We’ve been working on this for 11-plus years,” Mota said.
Last year, the province announced it was providing about $370,000 to the town to produce technical drawings for the proposed new arena and performing arts centre.
