What ‘the London story’ could say about Sudbury’s planned event centre
Opened in 2002, Canada Life Place in London, Ont., has been used repeatedly by city staff and council as a model for what Greater Sudbury can achieve in downtown Sudbury. So Sudbury.com reached out to the City of London and various downtown businesses there to see what impact the planned event centre here could have on the Nickel City’s core
Greater Sudburians don’t have to wait until its anticipated 2028 grand opening to learn what the new event centre might bring to downtown Sudbury.
The Canada Life Place event centre in London Ont. has been serving as a model by city staff for what Greater Sudbury might accomplish, despite the two projects differing in some ways, including scale.
Last month, city staff used “The London Story” as an example of what they’re trying to achieve.
“We’re using it as a good example of how an event centre can change your whole downtown,” city Growth and Infrastructure general manager Tony Cecutti said at the time.
Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti promoted this notion during last month’s meeting, which he reiterated in conversation with Sudbury.com this week.
When gathering information for the since-cancelled Kingsway Entertainment District (a proposed event centre off the beaten path on The Kingsway) several years ago, Signoretti joined other members of city council with staff in touring Canada Life Place (then called Budweiser Gardens).
This consultation between the two communities has continued as the city rolled out the $225-million downtown event centre proposal which city council approved last year.
With the Sudbury event centre slated to replace the more than 70-year-old Sudbury Community Arena, Signoretti has been consistent in his belief that it should remain downtown. Even after the Kingsway Entertainment District was approved by city council, Signoretti stuck to his guns.
The London experience, he said, supports this stance, which city council affirmed last year by approving the downtown event centre.
“Downtown arenas are where it’s at,” Signoretti said, adding that Canada Life Place was integral in turning around London’s downtown core, just as he anticipates Sudbury’s event centre will.
“The economic spinoff that occurred was immense,” he said. “It’s a page that we can grab from, and I think it would benefit our community and help with intensification and growing our tax base.”
Rather than parrot second-hand accounts, Sudbury.com reached out to Londoners for a direct account of how Canada Life Place has impacted their downtown.
The London Story
Initially called the John Labatt Centre (later called Budweiser Gardens and most recently Canada Life Place) London’s downtown event centre opened in 2012.
The new centre replaced the then-40-year-old London Ice House, located at the city’s southern outskirts.
The new event centre has a seating capacity of 9,090 for hockey and ice events and more than 10,000 for concerts.
Downtown London at the time “needed an insurgence of something,” Tourism London general manager Cheryl Finn told Sudbury.com, adding that the event centre filled this role.
“The investment was significant, much like it is in Sudbury, but at some point communities need to be courageous, and thank goodness London was courageous and council was courageous,” she said, adding that since that time, the London Knights OHL team has routinely hosted sold-out games, with 9,090 people coming out every Friday night during the hockey season.
Downtown, she said, has become “the place to be.”
“Londoners knew that on a Friday night or a Knights home game, that was the place to be … and from that we saw an emergence of an amazing culinary scene in our core as well,” she said. “Before and after the game, people wanted to go out and have a night of entertainment.”
The Early Bird and Holy Diver restaurant is located a few businesses down from the event centre, and co-owner Crystal Kendall said that business spikes during home games and major events — particularly for metal/punk/rock concerts, which tie to the restaurant’s musical theme.
“When those shows are on, we’re jammed,” she said.
Manager Hector Toledo-Huerta of the nearby SAGA Board Games and Coffee echoed this sentiment, noting that depending on what’s taking place, the event centre draws people in.
Although Tourism London didn’t have overall numbers ready to quantify Canada Life Place’s overall impact, Finn noted that the 2023 Tim Hortons Brier alone carried an economic impact of approximately $10-12 million.
In last month’s report to Greater Sudbury city council, Cecutti noted that the London venue has had an annual attendance of 450,000 to 750,000 since it opened and that London downtown’s assessment value more than doubled to $1.96 billion in 2019.
An estimated 5.5-million people visited downtown destinations for music and cultural events in 2018 and 2019, and the 2019 JUNO Awards attracted 37,000 attendees throughout various London venues (of which the main was Canada Life Place), carried a more-than $12.5-million economic impact and saw more than four-million people viewers at home.
Parallels to Sudbury
Canada Life Place is a multi-use event centre similar to what Greater Sudbury is working toward with a downtown event centre, but London’s is of a much larger scale.
The fixed seating capacity at Canada Life Place is 9,090, and the proposed fixed seating capacity at the Sudbury event centre is 5,800.
London is also more populous than Greater Sudbury, with approximately 543,551 to Greater Sudbury’s 171,446, according to the 2021 Census.
Both buildings are located in the core of their respective city’s downtown.
Canada Life Place replaced an aging arena at London’s outskirts, where Sudbury’s downtown event centre will replace an aging arena located across the street from it in the downtown core.
In addition to adding seats (4,640 at the Sudbury Community Arena, 5,800 in the planned event centre), the key change proposed for Sudbury is that the new facility would be modern and capable of hosting more events.
It’s also a change from the previously proposed Kingsway Entertainment District, in that it’s to be located downtown rather than several kilometres west down The Kingsway.
This offers a parallel to London, in that the city moved to shift its arena from the outskirts to downtown, which the Kingsway Entertainment District would have done the opposite of.
Before London officials settled on a downtown location, they came close to selecting a location at the city’s outskirts, London Chamber of Commerce Graham Henderson told Sudbury.com.
Not only was downtown the right choice for London, he said it is the right choice for Sudbury, too.
Downtown event venues “bring people in, they go to dinner, they hang around, they have a drink, they spend money and it has an economic impact,” Henderson said.
“You stick that out on the periphery and you can kiss that all goodbye for your downtown.”
These centres serve as a lynchpin for vibrant downtowns and establishing a community’s personality, he said.
“If London didn’t have that in the downtown, it would be a very, very different city, and I’ll bet you some other institutions would have left, too. My advice to Sudbury is to put it downtown.”
A couple decades later, Finn said that Canada Life Place is “definitely keeping people downtown longer, it’s attracting people, and all kinds of people.”
“Communities are always judged on the health and vitality of their cores, so an injection of that kind of energy, that kind of enjoyment, that kind of entertainment landscape really bodes well not only to attract and sell Sudbury to Sudburians, but to build a really significant tourism strategy around what you’re doing in the core.”
“I’m really excited for the city of Sudbury,” Canada Life Place general manager Kelly Austin told Sudbury.com. “What we’ve seen in London, putting it downtown was definitely the right move, and it really has had a great impact on the downtown core here.”
Modern amenities such as those the downtown Sudbury event centre is expected to include are key, Austin said, noting that Canada Life Place is being renovated this year to streamline concessions and add capacity to their back-of-house to accommodate larger events.
“I think it isn’t necessarily something that was missed in the first part of the construction, but as these events get larger we want to make sure we can host them,” Austin said.
“The tours want a facility that’s easy to load in and load out for their own timing so they can load the show in with no problem and get out for their next stop.”
Another parallel is with parking, with both communities employing a dispersed parking model which has patrons scattered across a swath of downtown.
This parking model is already in place with the Sudbury Community Arena.
The parking situation
Downtown London’s parking situation has received mixed reviews.
“From a tourism perspective, that is exactly what we would recommend,” Finn said of a dispersed parking model, which forces people to walk past businesses to and from events.
“We like people taking in all that the core has to offer, and walkability and safe walkability is very important, but if you’re condensing people in one specific area, as convenient as it is to Sudburians, you’re really missing an opportunity to get that foot traffic spread to the businesses that are there.”
Although there’s parking downtown, The Early Bird and Holy Diver patrons face limited affordable parking options, particularly during event nights, Kendall said.
“We have tons of parking lots around, but they’re overpriced and privately owned, so the city can’t really say anything about it,” she said.
For a while, the city offered two hours of free parking, but this has since been rescinded.
Maintaining affordable parking should be key for any community considering an event centre in a populous area, she said.
Toledo-Huerta was even more critical of parking options in downtown London.
“The area in general is terrible for parking, period — full stop,” she said. “In downtown, there are nearly no parking options when there’s a game or an event.”
There is parking downtown, but it might take a three- of four-minute walk through downtown to get to the event centre, Austin said.
Canada Life Place staff strive to let people know what parking options are available in the area on their website and in emails prior to events.
“Some people may see it as a challenge, so we make it as easy as possible for them to know where that parking is and that they can get there and make it to the event without any real hassle.”
The city is still drafting the nuances behind its parking plan, Signoretti said, noting that there are a number of municipal parking lots throughout downtown, plus street parking available.
Cecutti’s report from last month pointed to 3,648 parking spots available downtown.
What’s next?
The downtown Sudbury event centre is inching forward this year’s commencement of ground work, with a final site selected last month and six firms pre-qualified to manage its construction.
They’re not exactly breaking new ground, Signoretti said, adding that alongside Canada Life Place, staff can look to not only London’s Canada Life Place but also the City of Moncton’s Avenir Centre and St. Catharines’ Meridian Centre as positive examples of what Sudbury might achieve.
With a swath of city-owned land available to private developers in close vicinity to the event centre site, he said there’s already interest among developers in the hospitality industry.
Similar to London, he said there’s interest among developers to build restaurants and hotels.
“There are significant initiatives currently that are being rolled out to invite people to downtown … and getting them to invest in downtown,” he said. “We are the capital of the North, and we need to continue to advocate that we are.”
By Tyler Clarke, SUDBURY.com
