Saying it’s an ‘excellent opportunity’ that’s too good to pass up, Slave Lake’s mayor announced last week the province wants to partner with this community to build a facility that’ll serve as a new home for both. Even better, it could come at no cost to the municipality.
‘I think this is a very excellent opportunity for the Town, and I look forward to bringing the project to fruition,” Ray Stern announced at council’s regular meeting last week. He offered no details, other than saying the province’s Public Works department approached the Town with the offer to build a joint facility where the Town would be the ‘landlord’ and the province will lease space, essentially making the mortgage payments.
He said a similar venture in Hinton won the praise of both the province and the municipality. Making a motion that council accept the announcement as information, Stern added the project already has the blessing of Infrastructure Minister Ty Lund.
In a later interview with The Leader, Stern said there are “a whole bunch of unknowns,” at this point, but added the building will contain a large amount of office space, board rooms, and meeting rooms.
He added, however, it’s too early in the process to offer estmates on either the size or cost of such a facility.
But there’ll be offices galore and a new council chambers that could well double for a performing arts theatre, he added.
“If we could blend that into this development, it could dramatically reduce the amount of capital that would have to be raised” by the group that has set its sights on an expansion at the Northern Lakes College campus in this community. In essence, that group’s cost could drop from $4 or $5 million to as little as $400,000, said Stern. That cost, he explained, would represent the ‘extras’ the expansion group plans to build into its facility.
The extra wing at the college proposes to house a 350-seat amphitheatre of sorts – an idea that Stern believes is ‘over-scoped’. “We’re past the point (of having) a building that can be empty 360 or 350 days a year. We need something that’s used, used and used. (That is) something that sits (vacant) for maybe 200 days a year rather than 360 days.”
The proposed expansion at the Northern Lakes College “would create its own operating costs,” Stern explained. In a worst case scenario it could mean the college, the Town and the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River each picking up the tab for as much as $50,000 a year for the facility.
Municipal officials have already shared the idea with their counterparts at the M.D. and the college’s board of directors as well as the group that’s proposing the expansion. The project could be a couple of years in the planning, he added.
But the ‘huge carrot’, he admitted is the price tag.
“We’re hoping we’ll get a brand new facility at no cost, like Hinton. They’ve levered a number of grants and the rent (from provincial offices) pays the mortgage payments.”
He said "the group that’s spent the past number of years planning for a new wing at the college was confused."
“This came out of the blue and they’re still digesting it.
“But I think this is a tremendous way to make their life easier. It takes them from a $4 million or $5 million cost to maybe $400,000 for lighting and sound system – and other extras they planned” for the new wing.
‘No comment’ from college expansion group
But a representative for the college expansion group says he’ll hold his tongue until the entire group receives more details about the proposal and has a chance to discuss it.
Kyle Paulson says only a few members of the group have been told. anything about the proposal. And even those individuals say information was limited.
“All I can say at this point is ‘No comment’,” Paulson said when The Leader contacted him last week.

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