Funds approved to complete Coaldale arena upgrades from 2017

By Nikki Jamieson
Sunny South News

Coaldale town council has approved some more funds for arena upgrades.

Administration approached council during their regular Feb. 24 meeting regarding $50,000 in funds for some needed upgrades to dressing rooms on the north side of the arena, that had originally been approved in 2017.

“What we would like to do is upgrades the showers, the floor, some of the plumbing and the electrical lighting in the showers to make them useable for the user groups we have there,” said Terry May, director of operations for the town.

Back in 2017, a Request for Quotation with a close date of July 20, 2017 was tendered by the town for upgrades to the arena based on user group feedback. The original list of upgrades included renovations to the four dressing rooms along the north side of the arena, bathrooms and dressing rooms under the bleachers along with the installation of two hydration stations.

The town had received one quote, and to address all of the upgrades in the original scope it was higher than expect, leading administration to prioritize upgrades according to their consultations with user-groups.

As moving the referees dressing room and installing of the two hydration stations were the considered to be of higher priority, the scope of work changed to the installation of the two hydration stations, upgrading three dressing rooms under the bleachers and the upgrading the two washrooms under the bleachers, due to the financial constraints. As such, no work was done on the  the four dressing rooms along the north wall of the arena.

“Basically, with the original scope the pricing came in more than double what we had intended, so we had to go back a number of time and just start eliminating parts, making the scope smaller on that,” said Cindy Hoffman, community services manager for the town.

Town CAO Kalen Hastings said that the ice-users groups were consulted on how to best prioritize the upgrades, and at that time, there wasn’t as big of a need to upgrade the north dressing rooms.

“The reason it’s more important today is given the growing reality of youth sport in Coaldale,” said Hastings.

Coun. Jacen Abrey said that it would have been nice to have known this three years ago.

“When it was brought back to us after budget, coun. (Roger) Hohm was very clear that we thought this upgrade was already done,” said Abrey. “I realize it’s operational, but when the scope of approval on something is being changed, just a quick briefing so we know what’s happening, so when it come back, we’re not going back in our minutes looking and bringing back we’ve already approved this, how come we’re asking for this again?

“I’m not blaming anybody, and I understand when money doesn’t go as far as we want it to, but just so we know next time that the scope has been changed.”

Coun. Bill Chapman asked what the scope of this project would be. May noted that two of the four changing rooms on the north side were already taken up by user groups, so this request only concerned two of the changing rooms.

Council unanimously passed a motion to approve the request for funds for the renovations for the dressing rooms, with the funds coming from the facility reserve.

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