Sudbury Performing Arts Centre on hold due to nickel prices

We don't like to say we told you so, but...
This year NetGain completed a review of another consultant's feasibility study for a new performing arts centre in the city of Sudbury. We saw many similarities between the anticipated problems and success of this PAC and the North York Performing Arts Centre, for which we have completed a series of studies over the past 7 years or so.
At the time, the Greater Sudbury city committee leading the process wanted to build a centre of about 1800 seats, which we felt was far too large for the city, its current arts/culture market and its stated goals of revitalizing business downtown and serving the local arts community. This size was already being debated within the arts community itself. In fact, one of the things we mentioned in our final report to the client was to be very cautious, because a downturn in nickel prices could severely affect the city's fortunes and their ability and desire to subsidize a new PAC in perpetuity. Lo and behold, the following article came out this week.

Report on Business:

Closed mines, broken dreams in the town that nickel built

ANDY HOFFMAN
From Friday's Globe and Mail
December 5, 2008 at 12:56 AM EST
SUDBURY, ONT. — When John Rodriguez became Mayor of Sudbury in November, 2006, things had never looked better for the city whose economic fortunes have always been inextricably linked to the price of nickel.
The price of the metal was rocketing to record levels and Mr. Rodriguez saw opportunity for Sudbury to spiff up its image and shed its reputation as a hardscrabble mining town beholden to the vagaries of the boom and bust commodity cycle.
He unveiled plans for a massive recreation complex and a $167-million performing arts centre. Mr. Rodriguez planned to tap the new foreign owners of the region's major nickel operations for cash. Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce and Swiss-based Xstrata PLC had just shelled out nearly $40-billion combined to buy in to the Sudbury Basin. “I was going to ask for big bucks,” Mr. Rodriguez said in an interview.
Yet the mayor's dreams of building a world-class performing arts centre are now on hold. Vale and Xstrata are cutting production in Sudbury and closing mines because of a sudden and severe crash in base metal prices brought on by the global financial crisis.
“This is not the time to do it because the economy is falling apart,” he said.

Read the rest of the article here.