City Council Action - 12/18/2006

City Council Action on Ice Rink
December 18, 2006

At the City Council's December 18, 2006 meeting, the Council approved several things relating to the ice rink.

The Staff Report provides an overview, including:

The cost estimate has now soared to $16.2 million (from the pre-design estimate of $12 million).
In order to save $2 million in construction costs to get it down to $16.2 million, they will reduce the number of spectator seats from 500 to either 325 or 300 (documents conflict on the number). The "volume" of the project is also reduced slightly. There are no details on where the volume reduction will be. It is claimed these reductions will not reduce revenue.
The estimated maximum financing the expected revenues would support is $13.2 million. The civic center operating company has agreed to provide another million from their budget, thus bringing their project contribution total to 3 million.
Included in the documents provided to the council is Exhibit 4, containing a table of the estimated revenues and expenditures for the new facility.
The council:

Approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the operator of the ice rink at the Civic Center regarding termination of its lease there and replacement with the agreement at the new facility.
Approved the terms of a Management Agreement with that operator for the new facility. (Part 1 & Part 2). As part of the approval the council changed the agreement to make the promissory note due on termination of the agreement instead of foregiving it. They also tightened up the bonus calculation and restricted the public benefits program to Pasadena residents and low income PUSD students.
Approved spending money for further work with the intention to reimburse those expenditures from the proceeds of the financing they expect to do later. The financing would be up to $15 million of Certificates of Participation, to be repaid from ice rink revenues.
Authorized paying the architect more to revise the building design for some problems that came up and to save money.
Authorized an additional million dollars for the ice rink project from the Civic Center project's budget.
Amended the capital improvement budget to reflect the new cost estimate.

Also at this meeting

The City Council was told that city staff would be meeting with PCC early in January 2007 to work an agreement out. Council person Streator stated that she sees no reason why traffic should not use the nearby public street (in other words, Avocado and Alameda). (Councilman Haderlein has consistently promised to protect the neighborhood from ice rink traffic.)