Civic Auditorium closed over structural concerns and other issues

The future of Estevan’s venerable Civic Auditorium is in doubt, after the results came in from a survey commissioned by the City of Estevan earlier this year.

The city received the survey from WSB & Associates, an engineering firm, on Nov. 6 and announced the closure of the 60-year-old building the following day. It’s not known when, or if, the Civic will reopen.

Estevan city council is expected to make a decision on the Civic’s future at its next meeting on Nov. 20.

City manager Jeff Ward said council decided to move forward with the survey after some council members received concerns about the heating and other problems in the building during the 2016-17 hockey season. At that time, council was in the midst of budget deliberations, and discussed the possibility of spending $250,000 on repairs to the building.

“At that point, it was decided that before we start pouring money into this, let’s get a structural study done,” Ward told the Mercury. “The last one was done in 2004, so let’s get a structural study, and make sure we’re not throwing bad money at something.”

Any possible repairs to the Civic were tabled until the structural study was finished. The structural survey had been discussed for several years, but didn’t happen until this year.

Facilities manager Rod March put out a tender earlier this year for the study, which examined structural, mechanical, architectural, electrical, fire protection and other components of the rink. The document made recommendations, with costs, for discussions.

Mayor Roy Ludwig said the needs were divided into high priority, which are obviously council’s biggest concern, as well as medium priority and low priority.

Ward said the report revealed some “pretty glaring” structural issues with the building. Since 2011, and last year in particular, some of the water issues have caused some areas to sink on the north side.

“At that point, there was some breaking of brackets and beams that were significant enough that council said ‘Let’s close this immediately. Now that we know about it, we can’t let people in here in good conscience in case something happens,’” said Ward.

The structural and architectural issues were the biggest sources of concern for the firm that handled the survey.

The city did reach out to the engineering group to see if they would give clearance for people to enter the building, but without immediate assessment, especially in the foundation area, they wouldn’t sign off on it or accept liability.

At that point, council decided to close the rink indefinitely, because it couldn’t allow people in there.

Ward said the initial estimate to dig up the north end of the arena, and see what is happening, is $300,000. Then there would be the costs associated with repairs to bring the arena up to code.

Any upgrades will have to meet new fire and electrical standards.

Until the study came out, the Civic was operating as normal, and without issue.

It hosted the Spooky Civic event on Halloween, which drew approximately 1,000 people. It had also been used for Estevan Minor Hockey Association games and tournaments, and by other user groups.

Mayor Roy Ludwig noted that the structural survey from 2004 showed that the building was still structurally sound.

“We were OK to continue to use it for the use we were using it,” said Ludwig.

Council was hoping to receive this year’s survey earlier in the year, Ludwig said, but it’s a thick and comprehensive document.

He was surprised with the latest document’s findings.

“It had quite a few fairly major concerns, and once you start attaching dollar amounts to those concerns, you were very quickly up in the millions of dollars,” said the mayor. “At the end of the day, how long would those fixes last?”

Ludwig said council doesn’t want the civic to turn into a money pit.

“With all of the rains that we’ve had over the last few years, I suspect that everything was probably fairly good until all of that moisture,” said Ludwig. “Some of the main corners, namely the north one, has dropped four inches. In the architectural buildings, that’s huge for a large building like that.”

He hopes council will be comfortable making a decision on whether to make the necessary repairs to the Civic, or to close the building, at the meeting on Nov. 20.

Ludwig was the chair of the new arena committee that was responsible for Affinity Place, which opened in 2011. At that time, there was a lot of discussion about the future of the Civic, including the possibility of turning it into a field house that could be used for indoor soccer and other sports.

The closure of the arena leaves Estevan with two arenas: Affinity Place and the Power Dodge Ice Centre (PDIC). While those two rinks will be able to handle some of the Civic’s bookings for now, some ice time bookings are now at the Bienfait Memorial Arena, the Torquay Arena and other rural arenas in the southeast. The city will also expand hours of its two venues to accommodate as many ice time users as possible.

The Estevan Minor Hockey Association, the over-30 and over-40 recreation leagues, the Estevan Strippers hockey club, the Estevan Figure Skating Association and the Estevan Broomball Association are among the affected users who used the Civic in the winter months.

“I think they were a little shocked with how quickly it was done, but I think they also understood that as a 60-year-old building, when the study was sanctioned, that there may be stuff that would come out of it that would affect the usability of it,” said Ward.

Ward said that program manager Erin Wilson and her staff have been meeting to prioritize and reorganize the scheduling to figure out the best direction moving forward.

He also noted the city has looked at different options in the past for the PDIC to expand seating capacity and make it more spectator friendly, and he expects that will come up again during the upcoming budget negotiations.