Photo Courtesy City of Grande Prairie's Facebook Page

By Tanner Smith

Sports

Grande Prairie to host 2024 Alberta Winter Games

Jul 22, 2022 | 4:16 PM

The Alberta government has announced the host city for the 2024 Alberta Winter Games.

Grande Prairie was selected.

Bid Chair Mike Hussey says a big part of the decision was how diverse and serious Grande Prairie is about sports, with all different types of athletes from the region going to previous Alberta Games.

“As Minister Orr said the facilities here are competitive with anywhere in the province. We’re a city of 65,000, but the facilities we have you’d think were three times that, so the opportunity for kids here in Grande Prairie and for everyone else to see what we offer is really exciting.”

Hussey says this diversity in athletes leads to the success of Grande Prairie, not only in Alberta Games but in creating great members of the community.

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The announcement also came with the lure of an economic surge with 2,800 athletes and their families all coming into the City at once.

“It will be great economically for all the service industry, hospitality industry, and the economy as a whole,” said Hussey.

He added the biggest advantage for our area will be for the kids, ” I think the biggest benefit is going to be the promotion of healthy lifestyle, fair competition, and friendships and relationships that are going to make all these kids better people moving forward.”

Grande Prairie will have to make some upgrades to its facilities in order to host the games, but funding from the provincial government will make that easier, with $420,000 going to the games committee and $600,000 in funds to make sure the games actually happen.

Hussey said residents may see some of this provincial money go into “legacy infrastructure” around the community and upgrades of pre-existing facilities, such as Nite Hawk…

“Were working with them (Nite Hawk), for sure they have the infrastructure now with the T-bar that’s been set up to run the alpine events, we’ll be able to do the freestyle skiing events as well, and we’re looking at options to have it set up to be able to host all the snowboarding events if there’s not a full back chairlift operational.”

Hussey adds community members may see some of the “legacy infrastructures” become permanent improvements to the Nite Hawk Ski Hill.

The City will need about 2,000 volunteers when the games do come in 2024, and they are confident residents will step up and meet that goal with ease.

This will be the first time the Alberta Winter Games is in Grande Prairie since 1980, The Alberta Summer Games were hosted here in 2000 and 2018.

The event is expected to generate at least $3 million dollars of revenue for the area.