As Published in the Portage Daily Graphic June 10 2008

Another local business is standing behind the proposed PCU Centre in Portage la Prairie.

At Monday night’s city council meeting, councillors approved a $100,000 bid from McCain Foundation/McCain Foods Ltd. for naming rights of the two concessions at the proposed multiplex.

“We’re pleased to have gotten the offer from McCains, and we’re more than happy to accept their generous offer,” said Portage Mayor Ken Brennan after the meeting. “We look forward to seeing their name on the concessions in the new multiplex.”

The $100,000 will be given in $25,000 increments over the next four years, and will secure naming rights to the main floor concession and the concession on the second floor in the main arena for McCain over the next 20 years. The city also promised the concessions will try to use McCain products at the concessions whenever possible.

Brennan said the bid from McCain shows the multiplex project, which has been delayed since the city announced it was nearly $10 million short of the funds needed to build the complex, is something the community still wants to see built.

“The support for this project continues to grow in the community,” he explained. “From what I’ve been hearing, people don’t want us to lose focus on this; they want us to keep driving forward.”

The city had originally budgeted a maximum of $38 million to build the PCU Centre, but some of the funding promised by both the provincial and federal governments fell through, and to make matters worse the last estimated price of the build put the total cost of the project at $42 million.

Brennan has been in meetings with members of his council along with councillors from the Rural Municipality of Portage and designers of the multiplex trying to come up with ways to bring down the total price tag of the multiplex project.

He is hopeful the project will be tendered soon, so work on the project can start sometime this summer.