Leisure Centre one step closer to reality
June 30, 2015, 2:03 am
Kristen Weedmark
The Moosomin Conexus Credit Union recently donated $25,000 to go toward the proposed leisure centre at Bradley Park.
The leisure centre will offer many activities including an indoor walking track, 2,650 square feet of indoor commercial turf area, three sports simulator rooms, two indoor driving/putting rooms, an outdoor deck with a covered roof, and an outdoor deck with an open roof.
The indoor walking track will be 320 feet around, so 10 trips around will equal one kilometre. The simulator rooms will include 12 sports. There will be close to 100 world wide courses in the golf simultor. There will also be hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, cricket, rugby, football, midway/carnival games, zombie dodgeball, tennis, and track and field.
“I think we recognized that we had a need in the community, whether it be seniors or youth, that type of thing,” said Moosomin Recreation Director Mike Schwean.
“I think this was something that we could build that was relatively cost effective that could service a lot of the community that we weren’t able to do before.”
Schwean says he got the idea for the leisure centre when he saw a similar structure in Grand Forks.
“I kind of expanded from what I saw, but that was just something that I liked the look of and I liked the different things that they were able to provide,” said Schwean. “And then also having the town taking over the bowling alley, we wanted to do something to rejuvenate bowling, so we felt that this was kind of an all encompassing kind of thing.”
“We’ve had a really good response from the community—I haven’t heard anything negative to be quite honest,” said Schwean.
“There was some concern with money but from the outset we made it clear that we weren’t going to use taxpayer money and we were very diligent about that. Having made that clear to the community we have a lot of community donations, corporate donations, private donations, and so forth. This summer I’ve heard a lot of people are looking forward to having it here in the winter. It’s been nothing but positive in my experience.”
Schwean says that they hope to have a tender meeting in mid-July and hope to begin construction in August.
“We have all of our engineering stuff back and everything’s been sent off to Municode,” said Schwean.
“We have a few more fundraisers coming up,” said Schwean. “We have five planned for this year. We have a crop project, which we did last year as well. The Moose are donating their Mini British Open Golf Tournament money this year to the facility, so that’s in July. Our Elite Hockey weekend is now starting to take shape, they’ve confirmed for November 7, so Yorkton will host Estevan here in Moosomin that night and hopefully fill in with a triple A game and some other stuff.
“Our duelling pianos, which I think everyone’s excited about are here December 4 and 5. Saturday is sold out and Friday we have a few spots open but not a lot so we’re hoping that’ll be a major fundraiser for us. Once we start construction we’ll do a community blitz and we’ll take donations towards construction. The way that’ll work is if you make a donation you’ll get a donation receipt and as our gift we’ll match it with a user voucher, so you’ll be able to use whatever you donate towards the use of the facility. That offer will end on December 31 of this year.”
So far PotashCorp has donated $250,000 to the project and Conexus has donated $25,000. $25,000 has been collected in community commitments and $52,000 has been raised from fundraisers that were held last year. There are also three grants that are being adjudicated.
“The donation from Conexus is real big to us because it’s substantial money and it kickstarts the program again,” said Schwean. “It was kind of a lull while we waited to get through the engineering stuff, so having them on board kickstarts the project again and everything’s coming together at the same time with plans. It really goes a long way to kickstarting this again.”
Schwean estimates that about $350,000 has been raised, enough for the building for the leisure centre, and believes that about $500,000 to $550,000 is needed to finish the project.
Schwean says that if the Recreation Board had hired a contractor to do the job, the costs would be closer to $1.2 million.
“We’re fortunate to have PCS and now the Credit Union to donate. The Co-op is giving us the building package at cost, which is saving us $50,000. Dale Nixon is donating his time, and stuff like that is massive. So when we say we have $350,000 in money, there are all kinds of other money that is committed in different ways.”
