Essar Centre Manager Robert Santa Maria and other city employees may be about to lose their coveted offices with suite-level windows overlooking the Sault's most popular sports and entertainment venue.
Mayor Christian Provenzano and deputy chief administrative officer Tom Vair say a half-dozen city offices in the Essar Centre's southwest corner are being eyed with a view to converting them to box seats.
"We use a good chunk of that space for office space," said the mayor. "So the suggestion was we should investigate moving those city employees to less-prime space and looking at the cost of turning that space to box space."
"Initial estimate is we could fit six boxes into that space," added Vair, who said there are currently 10 to 16 people on the waiting list for suites.
The city is contacting them this week to confirm that they're still interested.
Provenzano and Vair revealed the office conversion proposal this week as City Council was discussing a resolution from Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker and his Ward 6 counterpart Ozzie Grandinetti, calling for additional box seats that were designed into the original structure but never completed.
Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland said the city looked into completing the box seats five or six years ago, but the cost was estimated at $5 million to $6 million for 10 or 12 boxes,
"One of the main reasons we didn't go ahead with this is we couldn't get the Greyhounds on board," recalled Councillor Grandinetti.
"If I remember right, the main cost for this was you had to take all the seating out, build all the concrete stairs and the structure. I believe the scoreboard had to come down, rip half the roof off to get the concrete in there," Grandinetti said.
- encourage mentoring or partnering with Sault Ste. Marie businesses
- help recruit talent to fill high-level job vacancies
- uncover new ideas for collaboration
- develop a new Sault Ste. Marie alumni organization
- advance community promotion and awareness
Christian pitched the idea successfully to Richard Nino, a former Saultite who's executive vice-president of Fiera Capital Corp., where he's responsible for the investment management firm's U.S. business development and chairs the company's European division.
The event is tentatively planned for April 21, 2018, at Branksome Hall, a private JK-to-12 girls' school in Toronto headed by Karen Jurjevich, another Sault expat.
"When we pitched this idea to her, she offered her facility," Christian said.
"The event is not intended to be a one-off. We're hoping it's the genesis for more dialogue, events and planning initiatives in the future," he said.
About 50 attendees are expected at the inaugural event.