At a special meeting of Council on March 4, 2024, Kimberley Council received an update on the Parks and Facilities Master Plan.
RC Strategies, a parks, recreation and community services-focused planning firm, has been working on the Master Plan for over a year. They have done actual assessments of current recreation facilities — many of which are not in great shape or nearing the end of their life span — they have conducted surveys, consulted user groups and gathered as much data as possible.
Priorities have been weighed, Council has been consulted and a massive amount of information gathered. This information has given a clearer picture of exactly what the current situation is.
For indoor amenities, it appears that residents find spaces for court sports, ice arena facilities, fitness/wellness facilities, art creation spaces, before and after school care facilities and libraries as the most important.
It was generally acknowledged by councillors and the consultants that the current library needs much more space, perhaps twice as much as is available now.
As for outdoor amenities, those who gave feedback identified an amphitheatre/event space, nature trails, mountain bike trails, cross country and snowshoe trails, disc golf course and campgrounds as top priorities.
The next steps in the planning process are presenting the draft master plan to the community, taking that input for a final draft and presenting it to Council.
However, this is a high level document, not a shopping list of what facilities will be built. Replacement of arenas, for example, are likely many years down the road, and in the meantime, it must be recognized that maintaining current facilities is very important.
Mayor Don McCormick noted that it’s not just recreation facilities vying for the same tax dollars, the city also has other responsibilities to spend money on.
One of the over-arching themes of the document is that of the value of multi-use facilities. For instance, many of the priorities identified could all be housed in one multi-use facility. Space for court sports, a public gymnasium and a new library could all be housed together. Most councillors agreed that was the ideal way to go.
Council also agreed that two ice arenas should be sustained, although McCormick said it was best to think in terms of ice sheets rather than arenas. He said that while the Civic Centre and Marysville were not a full capacity, if you got rid of one, the other would be well over capacity. He also noted that the Civic Centre housed the junior hockey team and any new facility would have to provide adequate seating for that. The other ice sheet, if a new arena were to be built, would not need as much seating.
The report also noted that many of Kimberley’s recreation facilities, from trails to gyms to arenas, were very reliant on volunteers to operate them. The city needed to continue to support those volunteers with staff resources in order to keep them operating.
“The city cannot afford to run all those programs,” said consultant Steve Sawuda. “So support these groups.”
McCormick said that the potential for partnerships was there when looking at building new recreation facilities, perhaps with the RDEK, or even the new Purcell Collegiate. He said the Collegiate should be breaking ground in the next two years and would be an elite sports school. The potential for partnership with them is there, he said.
A lot of the priorities are aspirational, he said, and the city needed to be practical and talk about what is actually affordable.
“Some of our assets are in rough shape,” said Coun. Sandra Roberts, adding that large projects were further down the road, pointing out that getting to the point of shovels in the ground for the new waste water treatment plant was a seven year adventure.
“We have to look at how to sustain what we have until we can afford to build new. But there are some amazing ideas on the table,” she said.
READ: RC Strategies update Council on Parks, Facilities Master Plan progress
READ: City of Kimberley looks for grant to fund a parks and facilities master plan
