Rainbow Centre spends millions refurbishing parking garage at downtown Sudbury mall

The owners of the Rainbow Centre plan to continue the multi-million dollar facelift of the downtown Sudbury mall this summer.

Vista Hospitality CEO Amin Visram says about $2 million in parking garage repairs are expected to start in April, which follows the $8 million already spent refurbishing the rooftop parkade and ramps in the last 18 months.

He says his company launched an engineering study of the parkade after seeing what happened to the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake in 2012. 

But Visram says he is frustrated by the constant comparisons.

"Absolutely and unequivocally," he says.

"The Elliot Lake structure was a completely different structure. It's not based as the structure we have here. We have rebar, we have concrete poured."

But documents obtained from the City of Greater Sudbury show that 14 orders have been issued against the Rainbow Centre over the last few years.

Nine of them are for failing to obtain a building permit and five are work orders requiring unsafe conditions to be remedied, four of which city records show is still to be rectified.

Visram says different cities he does business in have different rules as to what requires a building permit, so he says sometimes a "cosmetic" change like a door replacement will go ahead and then he'll be told he needs a permit afterwards.

As for the unfinished work required by the city, Visram says one of those orders is being addressed by the renovations planned for this summer and the other three were completed years ago.

"In this city, we find that when you get a work order, we try to jump on it right away. The problem is when it's done and when an inspection's not done timely, people like you jump in. And I get caught in the middle, because the work's done and I can show it to you," says Visram.

"So it's a question of the city coming in here, evaluating it and signing off on it."

Greater Sudbury chief building official Guido Mazza says sometimes paperwork is not updated promptly, as his inspectors await reports from consulting engineers who worked on certain projects.

He described Vista as a good corporate citizen who is willing to put in the work on their building, unlike other absentee landlords in downtown Sudbury with bricks falling off their buildings that he often has to deal with.

"If there was anything in there that Vista had not dealt with, we would have dealt with it," says Mazza.

Visram says Vista Hospitality has also spent another $4 million in recent years on renovations to the inside of the Rainbow Centre and the attached hotel.

He says about 80 per cent of the building is currently occupied, with a recent up-tick in retail tenants, as well as the office tenants Vista has been concentrating on over the last decade.

Visram says while investing in the parking garage is essential, it is a big cost that doesn't directly improve his company's bottom line.

"This is the fear factor any developer, any investor would have. Because as it's an area while it's a complete requirement, it's not visible to the guest," says Visram.

He says he does get the odd questions from Sudburians about the rooftop parking garage or about the health of the Rainbow Centre, which pays about $1.2 million in property taxes to the city every year.

He says he gets the feeling that many haven't been through the doors since its heyday as a shopping centre in the 1980s.

"And I think a lot of people are living in the past that haven't been in here in the last 5 to 10 to 15 years and haven't seen the metamorphosis," says Visram.