By Andrew de Souza

City hoping to score 2014 Saskatchewan Winter Games

Feb 15, 2011 | 10:29 AM

The City of Prince Albert, the Destination Marketing Fund and Prince Albert Tourism are hoping to bring the 2014 Saskatchewan Winter Games to the city.

The groups are working on putting together an official letter of interest for the games. If their letter is successful, they’ll be asked to make a formal bid to host the games.

Despite the term ‘bid,’ no money is actually required to host the games. According to the Saskatchewan Games board, a city must show they have the capacity to host the games, facilities meet standards of the sport, there are enough volunteers and support and sponsorships will be found in the community.

For Jayne Remenda, city councillor and executive director of the Prince Albert Destination Marketing Fund, it’ll be challenging to actually get the games here, but it will be well worth it.

“Prince Albert is well positioned to host this type of games where we already have the infrastructure in place and don’t have to build things in order to host it,” Remenda said.

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“For an event of this size, we’re looking at needing to come up with a $1 million-plus to bring an event like that to the community, but the economic spin-off that that type of event would bring the community is huge.”

Data suggests it’s worth it

While $1 million is a large sum, Remenda said the money that comes into the city would be far greater.

The evidence for that comes from a report to the city’s executive committee from the recreation division manager Jody Boulet . The report showed in the 2000’s, 18 events had come to the city and generated about $8.7 million for the local economy.

“It does take a considerable amount of work (to bring the events to Prince Albert), but the investment in those games or a major event has huge economic benefit to the local business community,” said Boulet.

Boulet added that the $8.7 million is just a small portion of the money that actually came into the city in the last decade because the city only had complete data from events sponsored by SaskSport.

“(The $8.7 million) are only from events that have received a hosting grant from SaskSport. We do many other tournaments, major events and not just on the recreation side but also arts and culture and every side,” he said.

Boulet’s report, available here (page 225) (http://tinyurl.com/4seajgd) is the beginning of what he said he hopes is more regular reporting of all events in the city to better understand the economic returns on the city’s investments into facilities.

He said the hope is to increase confidence in efforts to bring more events to the city by proving their benefit.

In the meantime, the city will be sending a letter of intent for the 2014 Winter Games shortly. If their letter is accepted, they’ll have until the summer to complete a bid package and will know if they are the winners by the fall of 2011.

adesouza@panow.com