Two years after breaking ground, the Lethbridge and District Exhibition’s new Agri-Food Hub and Trade Centre is nearing completion. CEO Mike Warkentin said he hopes to hold a grand opening in early August, but parts of the building will be ready to welcome guests later in the spring.
“The excitement is growing. We are weeks away now from letting the public into some of the spaces,” he said. “The more people we get in this space, the more people realize how different this is than anything we have in southern Alberta. Some of our event spaces we have in this facility, I would put up against the best anywhere in the province, including the mountain parks like Banff and Jasper and so as we get people into this space the excitement continues to grow and everyone who comes into it, in some way wants to be a part of it.”
The 268,000 square foot facility is one of the largest construction projects in the city’s history. Bill Scales, project director with Ward Brothers Construction, said the project is nearing 200,000 local man hours, with about 120-130 workers on site daily for the past two years.
“Besides the really big trades, that some of them had to come from out of town, there have been a lot of trades that were able to be sourced locally and so you talk about the pride that workers take in working on something like this locally, but also the impact — and even the people that are coming from out of town, they are staying in our hotels, they are eating at our restaurants and that so I mean it can only be positive for sure,” Scales said.
Both Scales and Warkentin said budget was a big stressor for the project, working through supply chain issues and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have obviously worked with significant budget restraints in this project. What we are exceptionally proud of is that we have been able to maintain a value per square foot significantly under other projects in Alberta and here in the city of Lethbridge. Yeah, it’s run over but we have found funding from other funding sources,” Warkentin said.
The facility was originally slated to cost $70.6 million and the cost has inflated to just under $80 million, Warkentin told members of the city’s economic standing policy committee last month. The cost was split up between the province ($27.8 million), the city ($25 million) and municipal borrowing ($17.8 million). Other sources of funding include a federal tourism relief grant and a gift from Lethbridge County.
BACKGROUND: Lethbridge county commits $2 million to Exhibition’s agri-food hub
Warkentin made an ask to the city for $4.6 million in March, which if approved will be used to decommission old Exhibition buildings.
READ MORE: Lethbridge and District Exhibition looking for additional $4.6 million from city for Agrifood Hub
The new building will feature recycled materials from both the site where it sits and the old Exhibition buildings.
“To build this site, we had to take down 225 trees from the old campground that was here at Henderson campground, as well as from our site. What was important from the get-go of this project is that none of that went to waste so we were actually able to recycle 10,000 board-feet of wood from those trees and those will be upcycled into the project,” Warkentin said. He added the trees are being used to build food court furniture and the old south pavilion bleachers are being reused.
A fireplace in the main lobby also pays homage to the original Lethbridge and District Exhibition building, which was lost to a fire.
“It is a water vapour fire. So nobody is at risk of burning themselves and there is no risk of it causing the new building to go up in smoke,” Warkentin said. He added there are pieces of the organization’s history sprinkled throughout the building design.
