On Monday, city council approved a plan to refurbish, instead of carpeting over, the hardwood floors in the main auditorium of the Prince George Conference and Civic Centre.
Back in 2020, city council approved a budget of $296,885 to replace the flooring throughout the facility. Based on staff recommendations in a 2018 report, the plan had been to replace the hardwood flooring with carpet in the main auditorium of the facility – a move which would have made the spaces no longer available for sports events.
“Since the original report in 2018, we’ve seen an increased demand for recreational space in our city, and the goal is to keep the auditorium open for a wide variety of uses, including, of course, conventions and conferences, but also year-round recreational use,” city director of civic facilities and events Andy Beesley said. “Since the pandemic, and for a variety of reasons, there just seems to be less high school spaces and school uses less available. While it’s true that the conference and convention centre looks nicer to have carpeting in all the meeting spaces, and would look great, but we don’t believe we would lose any conferences because we don’t have carpet on the main auditorium floor.”
The facility hosts a variety of sporting events including pickleball, badminton and volleyball, he said, and keeping the hardwood will allow those events to continue.
The original budget approved in 2020 will be sufficient to complete the revised project, Beesley said.
“I’ve had some struggles over the time, as we’ve talked about carpeting the entire venue. Although it seems advantageous for certain uses, not for all,” Coun. Kyle Sampson said. “So I appreciate this is going to stay a true multiple-use facility.”
