Southeast Event Centre pile driving to be finished in a couple of weeks

Construction is ahead of schedule on the Southeast Event Centre, and the pile driving is expected to be completed in mid-March.

The construction crew works during the week, and the occasional Sunday, from around 7:30am to 5:00pm. 

Mayor Earl Funk says they're working as hard as they can to make this a small window of pile driving.

“Because we're all aware that the excessive pounding wears on you, so we want to get this over with quickly.” 

He says it takes a long time to get foundation work done, but once it starts going up, it goes up quickly. 

“We have to make sure that we take the time now and get the piles pounded in properly, get the foundation set, and after that the building will go up fast.” 

Funk clarifies the arena will not be ready for the hockey season this year. 

"It's a little bit of pain for one year, and then we get this fantastic arena to play in again.” 

At first, they were going to phase it so they always had two ice surfaces, but the way they chose to do it saves a lot of money.

"We can save around $3 million, that's not confirmed yet, but that's what we're looking at.” 

He says the Southeast Event Centre should be bringing a lot of new things to the community, and that businesses and organizations are always looking at Steinbach to see if they should set up an office here.

"And you look, HyLife, they're setting up their head office here, Pennco Construction setting their head office up in Steinbach. So that is happening already.” 

He believes the Southeast Event Centre will be a catalyst for many things.  

“I think that's what's going to start happening. We'll start seeing the downtown used for a night out,” he says. “'Let's meet downtown. Let's grab some good food and let's go to the Event Center and now let's enjoy our concert.'” 

Funk notes they will have 500 parking stalls on-site. 

“And then there's still the street parking, there's other parking lots right close by. When you think of the lot by Solomon’s, it's a short walk to the arena, it's about a block,” he says. “And when you think of that, we can really fit a lot of cars on those parking lots for big events.” 

With files from Corny Rempel