Kingsway Entertainment District debate continues in Sudbury

The legal battles are over for Sudbury's Kingsway Entertainment District, but the debate over the controversial development continues.

Now that challenges to the Ontario's Local Planning Appeal Tribunal have been quashed the city can now go ahead with construction of a new $100 million arena on the site.

The project is expected to include a casino and possibly a hotel, but those plans are much less concrete. 

Robert Kirwan, a Sudbury city councillor who has been a vocal proponent of the development, says while the arena could be built on its own, none of the three partners is thinking about that now. 

"It's not even imaginable that all three are not coming forward," Kirwan said.

"Nobody's looking at moving forward independently because it was an integrated design that they wanted to develop," he said. 

"Moving forward, the property lines are actually wall lines. There's no space in between the properties. It's going to look like one big building."

But city councillor Geoff McCausland says he hasn't seen any indication that a new hotel is moving toward construction.

"I haven't heard anything about a hotel partner, not a name, not an agreement," McCausland said.

"I believe [developer Dario Zulich] has been representing the hotel aspect, but we haven't seen anything that looks like a promising development so far." 

McCausland also said he's worried that financial troubles for Gateway Casinos, which recently got a $200 million loan from the federal government, could also see their plans stall. 

He said he worries that the city could be on the hook for if one of the other partners pulls out of the project, since the partnership terms only require cost-sharing for the site preparation. 

"I don't think there's anything in black and white right now at all that stipulates that any of them is a must go."

"I think that we need to go back to the drawing board, start a new community dialogue," McCausland said. 

"We have $100 million burning a hole in our pocket. And we need to figure out in this new reality, is this the best path forward?"

Sudbury city council is set to get an update on the Kingsway Entertainment District next week.

Councillors say the next step is the multi-million-dollar site preparation, followed by the tendering of a contract to design and build the new arena. 

They say even if all goes well, the opening of the arena is likely several years away.