After 10 years and four unsuccessful attempts to build a waterfront tourist attraction, Sault Ste. Marie is taking another crack at getting something built on its Gateway property.
The City of Sault Ste. Marie is pushing to find someone new to dream up, finance and build a multi-million dollar project on the former industrial brownfield site.
City Engineering and Planning Commissioner Jerry Dolcetti and his staff have prepared a "development opportunity" document for release as part of a renewed request for qualifications (RFQ) and a later Request for Proposal (RFP).
A marketing piece was prepared by Lucidia Studios as part of the package.
Like many at city hall, he hopes an investment group and development team will respond and be in place to begin negotiations by mid-August.
It's been 10 years since the last RFQ, says Dolcetti.
"This time it'll be more detailed combined with the marketing piece to give a potential developer a better feel."
Still out there is a $15-million Northern Ontario Heritage Fund carrot, the same leverage money that was once offered to Garforth in 2006.
The money is left over from the Mike Harris Conservative government of the late 1990s and was earmarked for a selected developer to use as leverage to raise private financing for a "destination attraction."
Dolcetti says the next developer will have a track record of financially assembling and building these types of renewal projects. To help in the search, the city is teaming up with the Ontario Tourism Investment Office and FedNor's international business group to find someone through a direct mailing campaign.
Dolcetti says the city is open-minded to any proposal so long as it draws people to the waterfront and compliments other local attractions. "We're really open to making sure it is a quality tourism piece that sits within our overall master and tourism plan for the community.”
Dolcetti says the next concept could be smaller in scope than Garforth's grand design, given the economic climate in the sagging North American tourism sector.
"Something will happen and the scale of it depends on how the outside world sees Sault Ste. Marie."
The vacant property is bordered by the Sault's charity casino, St. Marys Paper, a hydro-electric power station, a heritage canal and a shopping mall. The Agawa Canyon Train Tour track runs across the property's northern fringe to a nearby passenger terminal.
Getting something built at Gateway has been an exhaustive chore through the years.
Since 1998, a slew of developers have arrived and left, starting with the Michigan Sault Tribe of Chippewas, First Gulf Development of Mississauga, MagiCorp Entertainment of Toronto and Rick Holmes of Grimsby's Kittling Ridge Winery Inn who first introduced Phil Garforth as a development partner. Holmes dropped out due to financial difficulties.
For a multitude of reasons, there's never been a developer with the right concept, deep enough pockets or the credibility to deliver a major tourist drawing card on the prime 14-acre of St. Mary's River property.
The latest one to come and go last fall was Toronto developer Phillip Garforth and his $54 million "Borealis" scheme of retail, live theatre and hotel built around a massive transparent dome housing exotic plants and trees.
Nothing was ever built and the relationship was terminated in November for what the city described as breach of contract. Garforth has since resurfaced in nearby Sault, Michigan where he's pitching a U.S. version of Borealis on a snowmobile race track.
