A new ice rink is on the city’s radar but a new-and-improved Canada Games Pool is the city’s top priority.
New West resident Daniel Fontaine recently launched an online petition to gauge community support and encourage the city to build a third arena in New West so the city could host more frequent and larger sports tournaments and can increase the flexibility of practice and game times for local athletes. As of Wednesday, more than 482 people had signed the petition, including New West native and NHL player Kyle Turris.
Steve Kellock, the city’s senior manager of recreation services and facilities, said the city’s 2008 parks and recreation comprehensive plan and 2013 Queen’s Park master plan both identified a third sheet of ice as a future need.
“As all of the priorities were reviewed and then quantified. Going through that process this was put as a lower priority,” he said of the master plan for Queen’s Park. “It was more of a long-term need, with more of the exploration with the user groups being that next step.”
In terms of recreational facilities, Kellock said the city’s current priorities are to address programs that have been displaced by the loss of the Queen’s Park Arenex and to plan for the replacement of the Canada Games Pool.
“We can probably assume this will find its way in front of council,” he said of the online petition. “Staff will look to council to set timelines on how they want to move forward and pursue this. They set the priorities around the projects. The Canada Games project is a current council priority.”
Mayor Jonathan Cote said the city identified a new rink as being a medium- to long-term need and determined the appropriate location would be adjacent to the current arena in Queen’s Park.
“That’s our top priority. We recognize it will probably be one of the biggest recreational projects the city has seen in probably many decades. We have done a lot of planning for that in our financial planning over the last number of years and we are ready to take that to the next step,” he said. “From a priority point of view, that’s where our focus and attention is. But there’s no doubt, we are a growing community and whether it’s seeing the addition of more turf fields in the community or the higher demands on our ice space, we do recognize those demands exist and they do have to be part of our long-term planning.”
Cote said the city is open to having discussions and doing further research about the right timing for a new arena, but doesn’t think it’s something that would jump the queue ahead of the Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre projects. He said Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre have the highest attendance numbers of all civic facilities in New West.
Cote said the city has also had to come to grips with whether it spends millions of dollars to rehabilitate the existing Canada Games Pool facility or invest in a new structure.
“We have decided there is greater value for the community by seeing the redevelopment of that site. There are some very site-specific maintenance issues and infrastructure projects regarding the facility that are really driving the timeline on the Canada Games Pool project,” he said. “If we delay that project another 10 years, we’d likely have to invest $10 to $15 million just to keep the existing pool open. We don’t feel that is a good use of taxpayers’ money.”
