PRESS RELEASES

They made it happen - Posted on 2009-05-21

Amid much celebration Wednesday, the Charlotte County Civic Centre was officially named the Garcelon Civic Centre and the project's movers and shakers announced the $3.5 million local fundraising campaign is over.
And despite grumblings and criticism from some taxpayers, some out-of-towners and even MLA Tony Huntjens, Wednesday's announcement of fundraising accomplishments and the public thanking of some of the project's major donors, was a milestone that many in this community will remember for the rest of their lives.
Critics will cluck that, yes, it will be a day to remember because the spending for the civic centre will, if they are to be believed, plunge St. Stephen into debt from which the town will never recover.
The civic centre will become a white elephant. The arena will be underutilized (or is it over-utilized because we've also heard the argument the project should include not one but two ice surfaces?). The pool will dry up from lack of use, they say, pointing across the St. Croix River to the Calais Motor Inn pool that closed up recently.
They fail to mention the Calais pool was cold (apparently keeping it warm and inviting wasn't in the budget) and it was in a hotel - and while open to the public, it was still not exactly in a high-traffic town centre like St. Stephen's new pool will be.
Critics also like to point to the Downeast Heritage Museum in Calais, a fiasco of a project that cost $6 million to build and now stands mostly empty, save for a few offices. How, we wonder, is that a fair comparison? The Downeast Heritage Museum was doomed from the start.
It was built as a tourist attraction on a business plan that wildly over-estimated the number of visitors per year. But there was nothing in it worth pulling off the road for and it tanked.
The civic centre in St. Stephen isn't a tourist attraction. It isn't, like the Calais pool, a private enterprise. It is for us. It is for the people of Charlotte and Washington counties, and it is being built due to the efforts of some of our community's best and brightest. People like the Ganongs and the Heelises and the Fultons and the Garcelons are making this happen. These are people who have had success in the business world, who have contributed to their community and who have, in some cases, continued to choose St. Stephen as their home when they could be living anywhere. If a civic centre is important to them, they could have retired to a community that already has one. But there is an opportunity here to bring a top-notch modern facility to St. Stephen and the civic centre volunteers are making that happen.
David Ganong said Wednesday that his Uncle Whidden was dead against another project decades ago - the Border Arena. He said, at the time, it was too expensive for St. Stephen.
"Whidden was wrong," Ganong said.
Today we're hearing the same tune. Critics say the province and the feds are spending too much on the project - $6.2 million each. But we all know that money is going to get spent somewhere. Why, for once, not here, now? Why can't St. Stephen have a modern arena with comfortable seating? Why can't we have an indoor pool? And why not on the waterfront, a prime piece of real estate that's underdeveloped and currently home to an ugly (and mostly empty) plaza and abandoned fields?
Yes, the waterfront area was once a dumping ground and it will take work, and lots of money, to make it suitable to build on. Does that mean we should give up on it? Let it sit idle forever even while Ottawa wants to pay for its remediation?
No.
The civic centre project has been controversial from the beginning.
There are those who still believe the town should simply pour its money into the old Border Arena - a building that has served us well but that is past its prime.
Then there are the visionaries, the risk takers, those who are willing to say we need and deserve a downtown civic centre, an anchor for the community, a centerpiece and a place where Charlotte County residents can exercise and socialize. They said they were going to "Make it Happen" and they were true to their word.