Saskatoon Downtown Event and Entertainment District budget estimate expected in June

The city of Saskatoon is looking to bring forward more information around the proposed Downtown Event and Entertainment District in June or July.

A report was brought forward in Wednesday’s governance and priorities committee meeting saying that reporting on a budget estimate, preliminary funding strategy and private partner procurement could be ready by that time period.

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City administration said that potential private partners who prequalified were requested to submit proposal packages around operations management and funding contributions for the potential event centre on Feb. 15 with a deadline that was pushed back to late April.

From there, the evaluation panel will review the proposals and create a ranking.

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After the ranking is created, more negotiations with the preferred potential partner would continue, to hash out the finer details.

These negotiations are expected to take at least 60 days to complete, and administration said it wants to bring forward a report on the potential budget estimate, funding strategy and private partner procurement taking into account the contributions from the private partner.