Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Construction has started on a project to revitalize the Activity Centre, Arena, and Fitness and Aquatic Centre facilities.
Carlson Construction began demolition work on Monday, which has closed the west entrance for the Activity Centre on Bonhomme Street.
鈥淲e appreciate that this is going to have disruption, that this causes a disruption for our sporting groups and for all of the community users of our facility,鈥� said Bill Given, CAO of the Municipality of Jasper.
鈥淲e are going to work to minimize those disruptions as much as possible. Our focus is ensuring that Jasper children still have as good an opportunity to participate in all the sports they know and love as possible, and we are committed to working with the community and all the users so that they can understand what is possible.鈥�
The west entrance closure is expected to last until November.
The east entrance near Commemoration Park will remain open for people to access the facility.
Municipal staff have been asked to park in the large parking lot on Bonhomme or on the street in order to make room in the east parking lot, and additional bike racks have been installed.
The Activity Centre front desk has been relocated to the old registry office, and Glenda鈥檚 Concession will remain open throughout the construction phase.
Given added that the Wildflowers Childcare now has a temporary entrance, and there is signage in the facility to guide daycare families where they need to go.
A portion of the Bonhomme Street parking lot will be used for construction purposes, but the rest of the parking lot will remain open to the public.
The winter season will have limited dressing room capacity, which will impact hockey and the ability to host tournaments.
Given said this was unavoidable since this was a 12-month project but that the municipality was still working on an interim plan.
鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at creating some temporary dressing room space inside the facility and others that aren鈥檛 a part of the construction project,鈥� he said.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a full plan of what that looks like at this time, but we鈥檙e going to work with our contractor and the operational managers here to identify what鈥檚 possible, and then we鈥檒l inform our sport user groups about that.鈥�
The other impact will be at the Fitness and Aquatic Centre, as part of the project will be a complete renovation of all change rooms.
Given said they would work with the contractor to see if they can phase construction, adding that they would take advantage of the annual shutdown as much as possible.
鈥淪o, we鈥檙e going to try and take advantage of as much of that typical downtime as possible to do the major construction project, but we do imagine that it will extend a little bit beyond what we鈥檝e traditionally seen.鈥�
The project includes adding three new dressing rooms and renovating the existing dressing rooms at the Activity Centre, renovating curling rink lounge, adding an elevator in the main lobby area and renovating the change rooms at the Fitness and Aquatic Centre.
All the facilities will also get targeted improvements to their mechanical and electrical systems.
The estimated cost of the project is $20.4 million.
The project had been budgeted at $14 million, but council recently approved increasing the budget by $6.4 million, to be funded by debenture, due to the impact of inflation.
In the coming weeks, the municipality plans to provide a construction schedule for the next few months.
Updates on the project can be found on
