By Sheena Roszell/Justine Kelsie

The city is once again discussing what to do with the old Leisure Centre building

Jan 31, 2018 | 4:30 AM

The future of the Leisure Centre was brought up again at a city committee meeting.

Councillor Dylan Bressey says it’s a piece of land that’s sitting empty right now, in the middle of a neighborhood with a lot of young families.

He says the first thing council is going to do is look at the current needs of the facility; if they can use the building or if it should be torn down. From there council will have an opportunity to share their ideas for what they’d like to see done with the space.

“I would absolutely love to see a pool,” explained Bressey.  “I don’t know if we can afford a pool right now, especially if we’re not able to bring in regional partners. If a pool isn’t the direction council wants to go, maybe another option is what I’m calling the ‘untraditional leisure-leisure centre.’”

This could include space for things like a climbing wall, or inside skate park, or a place to have small musical performances.

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Bressey said the last council did have plans to reopen the Leisure Centre as a pool, but as they looked into it, it got more and more expensive and eventually the decision was made to take the funding from the Leisure Centre and put it into the outdoor Bear Creek Pool.

Finding a use for the old facility is important to Bressey because he says he’s spent his career working with teenagers and he knows how valuable it is for them to have a community place to hang out at when they’re not in school.

He says he moved into the Avondale neighbourhood a few months before the Leisure Centre closed and noticed a lot more kids doing illegal activities when the adult-supervised space was closed, and they had nowhere else go.

“I really feel like we need to start moving forward with something for that piece of land.  What that something is, I’m very open to conversation, and I know we have ideas at this point, but we need to have a vision.”