More user groups will soon be calling the Connaught Youth Centre home, including some street youth.
For decades the former school at the corner of Victoria Street and 17th Avenue has been the headquarters of Prince George's four cadet groups, plus Shaolin Boxing/Kick-Boxing. According to new terms of their provincial funding, said new board chair Catharine Kendall, the facility must expand its mandate but maintain its focus on youth.
Kendall led an 18-month study (Prince George Community Assessment and Action Network or PG-CAAN) that determined two key structures be made available to the city's youth. These were presented this week to mayor and council as part of a report by the city's social development manager Chris Bone. The city owns the Connaught Youth Centre.
"As a result of the PG-CAAN initiative, two major projects for this neighbourhood [the crime-ridden VLA/Carney Hill area] are recommended," said Bone in her report.
"1. Development of the Connaught Youth Centre, one block from Carney Hill neighbourhood, as an after-hours 'Youth Life Skills Centre' where, through the right partnerships and apprenticeships, youth could assume responsibility for the centre and make it their own. Cultural and traditional healing would be strong components of this facility which would serve as a bridge to the family-focused centre in the Carney Hill neighbourhood."
The second recommendation was for a Carney Hill-based community centre with all-ages programming and an emphasis on aboriginal and family content.
The Connaught Youth Centre's current tenants also sit on the new board, and have a major stake in the operation of the facility.
The cadets would lose no ground to new user groups, Kendall said. What is available is a gymnasium with bleachers and three classrooms that could all be rented out to other youth-based groups during the times not spoken for by the four cadet units and the resident boxing club.
"I don't see them [board members] as cadet people. I see them as people who understand the facility is under transition in its youth focus," she said. "We are looking together at how we open up the facility to youth, and we are exploring that. They are certainly open to new ideas."
The Connaught Youth Centre comes with a particularly attractive feature: zoning that allows for 24-hour usage. This, and its location so close to the VLA/Carney Hill streets, makes it more helpful than any other current option.
"Ideally the youth could have their own place, and with a facility 24-hour zoned it would be nice to utilize that place around the clock," Kendall said. "An alternative centre is unlikely to get a 24-hour zoning in the VLA itself because of the residential nature of that neighbourhood. There is no such place. This exists."
