Group looks for down payment on sports centre
$9M pledge solicited for Mill Woods facility
David Staples, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Monday, November 06, 2006
EDMONTON - Despite the city's current budget crunch, city council should not kill the dream of building a $36-million
Mill Woods sports facility with nine indoor basketball courts and eight volleyball courts, Coun. Bryan Anderson says.
On Monday, leaders of the GO Community Centre project will ask council's Community Services committee to recommend that council pledge $9 million to the building project.
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David Dorward holds an architect's model of the proposed GO centre.
Ed Kaiser, The Journal
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Font: ****"I don't want council to be the group to say, 'Sorry, that's an impossible task and we're not going to commit ourselves,' " Anderson says.
The $9 million won't have to be set aside in the current 2007 budget, Anderson says. That budget is already tight, he acknowledges, with costs escalating and many citizens already unhappy about a proposed 7.8-per-cent tax increase.
Instead, council would promise to come up with the $9 million only if the GO project leaders are able to raise $9 million on their own, and get the provincial and federal governments to each kick in $9 million.
But if city council does come through, the project's chairman, David Dorward, says he has assurances the federal and provincial governments will also come up with their share of the money. Dorward's group has already raised $1.2 million for the project.
Coun. Ron Hayter says he has yet to make up his mind about the plan, especially given the current debate over tax increases. "Council is going to be very wary of getting involved in a project like this, even though it's certainly a good one."
The GO project has been in the works since 2002, Dorward says. At first, the idea was to have nine basketball courts built under one roof, but later a need was identified for other facilities.
The 195,000-square-foot GO Centre would be built at John Fry Park, at 28th Avenue and 92nd Street, and be open for use by January 2009.
"This will be the only facility of its kind in Canada," Anderson says.
Once the GO Centre is built, the project leaders -- the Edmonton Grads, the Edmonton Volleyball Centre Society and the Ortona Gymnastics Club -- promise to operate the facility without further city funding. Budget plans are very conservative, Dorward says, adding that the facility needs to be booked only 52 per cent of the time in peak hours for it to break even.
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© The Edmonton Journal 2006
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