Sports centre magnet for city of Sault.

When Patti Kidd hits the road this winter to promote Sault Ste. Marie at executive trade shows as the place to be for meetings and conventions, she'll have more in her portfolio package than just conceptual drawings.

With the October opening of the $25 million Steelback Centre, the city wants to attract regional, provincial and even a few national events normally reserved for mid-sized Canadian cities.

As Tourism Sault Ste. Marie's convention and sports tourism coordinator, Kidd says the arrival of the modern 4,700 to 6,000-seat sports and entertainment facility will be a key drawing card and should go a long way toward increasing the city's profile at a first class event host.

"Nobody thinks about sports tourism as a money generator to bring people into your community."

But according to the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance, sports tourism is a $2 billion per year business.

Locally, conventions and sporting events over the last five years have resulted in an average of $4.7 million annually in direct spending in the community.

Hosting meetings, conventions and sports events have been high on the radar screen of local tourism officials for more than two years, says tourism director Ian McMillan, "knowing full well this building was getting built."

They highlighted sporting events as one of the major markets to pursue because of the economic ripple effect it provides city-wide in filling hotel beds and restaurants.

"We feel we have at least a 10-year window in Northern Ontario where we're going to have the newest and greatest facility," says McMillan.

Not only does the Sault have competitive advantage with a new sports and entertainment facility, says McMillan, but also a "de facto conventional centre."

Although the Steelback Centre's main tenant is Soo Greyhounds hockey club, tourism officials and their business partners pushed hard for convention capabilities at the design stage.

Together with tourism chairman Bill Durnford, McMillan worked with the arena project team to ensure "tourism values" were built into the facility. A full service kitchen was installed, along with multi-purpose meeting and breakout rooms, air conditioning, full wireless capacity with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and a large bay door can accommodate transport trucks for trade shows.

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"It gives us all the things we identified as critical to us when we're going out to sell the city."

Local hotel operators were so excited with the arena design, they invested $500,000 into Tourism Sault Ste. Marie's Destination Marketing Fund, which was then levered to attract $1 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.

Already the booking sheet for the Steelback Centre is starting to fill up.

Besides a figure skating show booked for December, there are upcoming spring and forestry shows, a Harley Davidson bike rally for August and the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers Conference has booked for 2009. The Sault beat out Vancouver and Toronto to host the Finnish Grand Festival scheduled for 2010. The week-long North American event is expected to attract 5,000 delegates.

Ownership of the Greyhounds recently announced they intend on bidding to host the 2008 Memorial Cup, the national championship tournament of major junior hockey, something that was unthinkable with the dilapidated Memorial Gardens.

The new arena has already named host venue for the 2008 Ontario Hockey League All-Star Classic:

"There may be some things that may limit our ability to host some events but we'll certainly make attempt to go after them."

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business