By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

City Hall looking at using empty commercial buildings for recreational facilities

Nov 25, 2022 | 6:00 AM

Grande Prairie city councillors endorsed setting aside up to $1.1 million at last week’s budget talks to retrofit existing commercial buildings so they can be used as recreation facilities.

Councillor Wade Pilat made the motion and says he has seen this done in other cities.

“This was just a mechanism, and I was glad that council supported it, that we could start looking at that in our community, to retrofit some of these buildings.”

“With the cost of building new currently, I am confident that we can actually retrofit some of these buildings and re-purpose some of those areas to get traffic back into them.”

Pilat says this will allow user groups to have a stake in the facility, plus these groups can apply for grants the city is not eligible to get.

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He adds some of the owners of the buildings like the idea.

“I spoke to several of them actually and we’ve thrown out concepts. I think that was the intent of letting administration come back with what it would look like for this moving forward.”

“I’m confident that there are a few user groups that like the idea that I’ve spoken with and I’m confident there are a few owners that would be very receptive to this to re-purpose some of their buildings.”

Pilat says this could work for sports like volleyball, basketball, and pickleball.

“There are some industrial buildings that actually have enough height and enough space.”

“The unfortunate problem for soccer is it’s just such a big span. There are not as many options for soccer, to do traditional soccer, I guess. If you wanted to do futsal in them, you probably could, but who knows? Soccer might come forward with a proposal to retrofit one of the buildings as well.”

Pilat says a new building could be two or three years away, while this retrofit idea would see buildings being used by this time next year.