The Municipality of Chatham-Kent will likely be embarking on more public consultation and due diligence if the redevelopment proposal for downtown Chatham gets the go-ahead from municipal council Monday night.
Administration is asking council to set aside up to $50,000 from municipal reserves to get certified appraisals for its municipal facilities and to determine updated costs of renovating the civic centre and other municipal facilities. The estimated cost of the new community hub, which includes a new civic centre, and other related buildings will also be reviewed.
In a presentation earlier this week, Downtown Chatham Centre co-owner Rob Myers said the municipality can sell the current civic centre, public library, and cultural centre and use the money to pay for the new community hub.
"There's plenty of people around here that would be interested in buying those properties and create more development in Chatham, more housing, more culture in Chatham, more arts, and things like that," said Myers.
Myers said the owners have already spent a lot of time and money trying to get this project right.
"We don't want to fool around with this and we don't need more consultants to come in and all of that nonsense, right? We've spent enough money and enough energy and enough time on this that we know what we're doing, it's not our first rodeo here, and we have the people to do it," he said. "We've spent several hundred thousand dollars developing a plan for downtown Chatham-Kent and we believe we've hired the right architects."
Mayor Darrin Canniff said this is a unique opportunity that can't be wasted.
Administration anticipates there will be more due diligence following the public engagement, including detailed facility scopes, an entertainment complex feasibility study, planning, traffic and economic analyses, operating impact assessments, financing recommendations, and legal advice and transactional negotiations.
There is no current timeline to complete the due diligence, but the council is expected to be updated on its status on August 8, 2022.
