A city committee will get another attempt at negotiating the naming rights to one of the best known buildings.
Mosaic Place will need a new name in the fall. Two weeks ago, city council had decided on a company to negotiate the rights, but the day after that meeting some citizens approached the city to say they wanted to try again locally.
Moose Jaw mayor Clive Tolley wouldn’t say who the new people are helping with the committee.
“I’d rather just keep that confidential,” he said. “Let’s just say that people from our community were concerned about how much we’d have to contribute to a private company to secure naming rights. They thought perhaps they could help. So they volunteered, they stepped forward, we’re accepting their help and we’re going to take another run as a community at getting a naming rights partner without paying a professional company to do it.
Performance Sponsorship Group was to be given $29,000 up front and 20 per cent commission – both the lowest bids taken from three naming rights partners. That agreement will be on hold while the new group tires again. The new committee has July and August to negotiate.
Mosaic’s agreement with the city for naming rights expired last year, and while they extended it another year, the deal ends this fall. Tolley said the committee said if there was new interest in helping find a new sponsor, why would they turn that down?
“We haven’t been successful thus far in securing a naming rights sponsor, we approved to hire a contractor to do that,” he said. “People in the community said ‘hold on, maybe we can help. So we’re accepting their help. It’s as simple as that.”
Mosaic has paid the city $150,000 a year for the last 11 years for the naming rights, and Moose Jaw Mayor Clive Tolley is hoping for at least that in the new agreement with the new sponsor.
“We’d like to get a slight increase,” he said. “We think the value of the naming rights has increased in that 11 years.”
Tolley said the new committee has already had a meeting to look into new sponsors. He added that Mosaic will continue to spend the same amount of money in Moose Jaw, but are looking into investing that into local food security.