Working Group to explore future aquatic needs in Town of Coaldale
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Over the years, many of the ice users that call the Coaldale Arena home have expressed a shared interest in enhancing and expanding the facility. In winter of 2020, the executive of the Coaldale Minor Hockey Association (CMHA) approached the Town of Coaldale with a request to form a user-based committee to formally explore these ideas.
Citizen committees, or working groups, are one of the many ways the Town of Coaldale engages directly with its residents in order to guide decision making by providing the opportunity for continuous, in-depth feedback. Other working groups that have guided the Town in recent years include Access Coaldale, which provides input on accessibility of the built environment around town, or the Sport and Recreation working group, which was a citizen led working group that ultimately provided Council with the recommendation to build the currently under construction multi-use recreation center. Working groups are used alongside surveys, open houses, and other methods of engagement to continuously connect residents with the Town's ongoing decision making.
“Most of the sport and recreation facilities in Coaldale were built in the 70s and 80s and have not grown in line with the population growth of the community,” said Russ Tanner, Director of Recreation and Community Services at the Town of Coaldale. “There will always come a point in time when there is a need and a want for new and/or upgraded facilities – Coaldale’s arena is no exception.”
Originally built in the mid-1970s, the Coaldale arena and swimming pool has been home to many users over the past 45+ years. The facility is perceived by many to be beyond its capacity given the current level of use and the number of community members that represent Coaldale’s user groups.
“In a context such as municipal government, where many needs and desires compete for a fixed amount of money that is available each year, the most challenging aspects of recreation facilities is the initial capital costs of construction and the ongoing cost of operation and maintenance once they have been constructed,” said Tanner. “It is often the case that major facility enhancements and expansions can only occur at certain points in time, and often beyond when would have been ideal. The working group was formed with the intent to take steps necessary to deliver an enhanced and expanded facility in the future that includes a new pool and second sheet of ice.”
Coaldale’s new joint multi-use recreation facility is being built with this in mind – there are a number of strategies involved to reduce the operating costs though both private and public partnerships that give us the ability for a full cost recovery.
“The multi-use recreation facility is unique in that we’re able to recover the capital costs and actually achieve an operation surplus over the next several years,” said Tanner. “Very few municipal facilities are able to do this, particularly aquatic centres that run at an operation deficit.”
The work undertaken by the Waves & Blades Sportsplex Innovation Working Group is primarily a community-based, user group driven activity. The Town is committed to offering assistance and resources to as great an extent as possible, with the focus being to make the working group’s vision a reality.