In the near future the Barrhead Curling Club (BCC) will have a space to stow away its excess gear thanks to a decision by town council.
Councillors, during their June 27 meeting, unanimously approved a request by the curling club, asking them to build a storage room for the club. In a separate motion councillors also approved to take the funding out of its recreation reserves and to accept the $21,995.25 from Du-Al Contracting and Developments. As part of the motion they are requesting that the BCC contribute half of the costs, but will proceed with the work regardless. Later in the meeting council unanimously voted in favour of Coun. Ty Assaf’s motion to ask the County of Barrhead to share in the costs.
Chief administrative officer Martin Taylor said informal discussion with the curling club began shortly after the flooding incident in March, which caused the premature cancellation of the curling season.
He added one of the issues public works staff identified for the flooding was a large wooden sliding door on the north side of the building and suggested it be replaced with a wall.
“Since we are going to be doing work anyway we thought this would be a good time to address the curling club’s request,” he said.
Mayor Gerry St. Pierre asked why the club needed the extra storage space.
BCC president Grant Balen said they want to move items they have stored on the walls or in a storage container to the side of the ice surface to a more secure location.
“We also would like to move our ice scrapper off the ice surface. It is just cumbersome and it would be nice to be able to store it in the back instead of moving it all the time,” he said.
St. Pierre said over the years town ratepayers have spent a lot of money on the curling rink.
“Starting in 2012 with all the technology upgrades to bring it up to make it an accessible facility, painting the whole building, roughly we spent $75,000 to do all of that,” he said.
St. Pierre added although the curling rink received $100,000 in total from the 2014 Kraft Celebration Tour for the replacement of the ice plant, the town contributed an additional $35,000 to the project.
“The other issue that distinctly comes to mind is that when we won the $100,000, I distinctly remember a meeting we had with the curling club’s executive that there was a verbal commitment made where $25,000 of the $100,000 was going to be contributed to the swimming pool,” he said, noting to his knowledge that donation has never been made.
Balen interjected that the club never asked for work, such as push button automatic doors to be done.
“Maybe the club didn’t need that, but as a recreation facility, owned by the municipality, we really didn’t have a choice,” St. Pierre replied. “The only other option was to shut it down completely and not have a curling club.”
He then asked how much more the town should spend on the facility, other than regular upkeep.
“We have to remember there are other users of the facility besides town residents, but it is our ratepayers that are funding it,” St. Pierre referring to the recreation department statistic that 62 per cent of curling club members are from the County of Barrhead.
“It’s unfortunate that we don’t have municipal partners [County of Barrhead] who believe as strongly in the curling facility as we do. This facility has been a great asset to our community for many years and will continue as such for years to come,” Coun. Don Smith added. “But there are hard decisions that have to be made, so my question is, how important is this storage room at this facility?”
Balen said while they believe a storage room is important the club’s executive hadn’t had an opportunity to discuss the costs, not seeing the estimate before.
“But I think $160 a square foot is a bit exorbitant for a storage room and it is something we will need to discuss,” he said.
Taylor added it is council’s decision whether or not to proceed with the improvements.
“Then you deal with the tenant of the building accordingly,” he said, noting time was of the essence since the work needs to be coordinated with the town’s other flooding prevention work.
