A group dedicated to upgrading the Otway Nordic Centre is not deterred by a failed attempt at gaining the city's backing for a funding application to the Community Recreation Program.
Announced last September, the Community Recreation Program is a $30 million fund linked to the 2015 Canada Winter Games and aimed at giving families greater access to recreation facilities. Eligible projects include sports facilities, community recreation spaces, fitness facilities, trails, bike paths and more, with preference given to small communities.
Each community is only able to make one application to the program, which left council to decide between supporting the development of Duchess Park or upgrading Otway Nordic Centre for the games.
Council decided to back the Duchess Park project during the final meeting of 2011.
"The city only had one opportunity to put an application forward and they chose the Duchess Park redevelopment which we know is an important project for the hospice and for the community. But we were able to get the Regional District [of Fraser-Fort George] to consider Otway as one of their options because the Regional District had three potential projects they could put forward and they agreed to that," said 2015 Canada Winter Games Host Society CEO Stuart Ballantyne.
As the proposed venue for cross-country and para-Nordic skiing events as well as biathlon competitions for the 2015 Winter Games, capital upgrades need to be completed to bring the facility up to the Canada Games minimum
standards.
"It's obviously one of the key venues we want to get done and finished early so we can get the northern B.C. athletes a chance to train on the facility they'll eventually compete in," Ballantyne said.
That home-field advantage would help to realize the idea of providing pre-Games legacies to the community, as identified in the Prince George bid documentation.
More than $18 million worth of capital projects will need to be completed before the event (more than $16.5 million of those dollars are dedicated to the Kin arena), with the federal and provincial governments both proposing a cash injection of $3 million to help with the costs.
This means a large portion of the costs still need to be funded through private sources, direct fundraising and other government funding initiatives, such as the Community Recreation Program, said Ballantyne.
Upgrading Otway is estimated to cost just more than $511,000 and the host society is asking the provincial program for $400,000.
The upgrades include: construction of a technical officials warming and timing/scoring building; trail upgrades to widen and re-grade the stadium start/finish areas; construction of a new biathlon rifle range; biathlon penalty loop; and a wax testing area that meets the minimum Canada Games and National Sport Organization
standards.
In a report to city council, in addition to having up-to-standard facilities for the Games, the Otway upgrades would provide additional benefits "in the form of better training facilities, attract additional young athletes to these sport disciplines through greater access to facilities and provide a legacy to the local organizers of the winter sports of cross-country skiing, biathlon and para-Nordic skiing through a greater ability to host competitions at the Otway facility in the future and to the general recreational users of the facility in the form of year-round use of the facility for skiing, hiking and
mountain biking."
The application received support from various groups such as various Nordic ski clubs, Biathlon BC, Cross Country BC, Cranbrook Hill Greenway Society and Prince George Road Runners.
The announcement of which projects were successful in their bid for a Community Recreation Grant is slated for March 31.
