Photo: Shaun Penner

By Shaun Penner

Five Mile Hall

County seeking leaseholder for Five Mile Community Hall

Oct 10, 2019 | 7:25 AM

The County of Grande Prairie is looking to find a new operator of the Five Mile Community Hall.

After extensive negotiations with the Five Mile Agricultural Society, the County has agreed to overtake the land and building on the site, effective December 31, 2019.

The reason behind the transfer is because the society has been struggling to maintain membership numbers and was finding it too difficult to run the hall.

“They were really floundering with the amount of volunteers that they have to operate a hall of that size,” said County Reeve Leanne Beaupre. “And it had become more of an events centre, versus a community association.”

With that, Council has directed administration to seek a leaseholder for the hall as a way to help cover the associated maintenance and operating costs of the building while still maintaining control of it.

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The main reason the County wants to keep their hands on it is because of the plans they have for the adjacent lands, which they purchased earlier this year.

“We really want to make sure that, whatever the decision Council makes, it keeps in mind that there will be a school site, maybe two school sites, in that area,” said Beaupre. “It should be complementary to that school site.”

Before long, this land may have two schools on it (Photo: Shaun Penner)

A design charrette was held back in September to engage area stakeholders on what they would like to see done on the land. That design process found a big need to not have just one school on the land, but two.

The image above shows the preferred design for the land adjacent to the hall, as designed by stakeholders during last month’s charrette process. A final report and proposal will be presented to Council for approval later this year (Photo: County of Grande Prairie)

The final proposed design will be presented to Council later this year.

The RFI and bidding information will soon be available on the County’s website for any groups interested.

“(We’re) very engaged in what happens with the hall, because it’s very high functioning and the lifecycle of the hall is long. So, we want to continue to make sure that it has a use that’s appropriate with what’s going to happen in the future with the surrounding schools there.”