Photo: EverythingGP staff

By Emily Keller

community project

Rotary Club of Grande Prairie pledges $1.8 million towards D Coy Community Hub Project

Dec 19, 2019 | 8:52 PM

The Rotary Club of Grande Prairie has pledged $1.8 million from their Dream Home Lottery to the restoration of the D Company, or D Coy, Armouries building.

The plan is to restore the building into a community hub, particularly for youth, community groups and not-for-profits.

Bruce Tattrie, D Coy Community Hub Project Chair, says the plan for the building was initially different.

“This project started out as a feasibility study on the building, maybe we could just take the bathrooms and revamp them, but because of the vintage of the building, anything we would’ve done would’ve triggered a lot of safety code changes, so then we decided maybe we should just revamp the whole thing and make it a community hub.”

The facility has five key user groups, including the 577 Air Cadets Squadron, 2850 Army Cadets Squadron, Department of Defense Zone Training Officer, YMCA North Programs and Play Zone Summer Camps.

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Tattrie says they are planning to have new classrooms and boardrooms in the building as well, and that they have already seen interest from the community.

“We’re hoping when it’s all said and done, it’ll be busy seven days a week kind of thing, and we have some new people. The RCMP’s looking at doing some training in there, we have search and rescue looking at it, after school programs, again for YMCA, they’d like to add that. We don’t have anything locked down because we don’t have a building yet, but we’ve had quite a bit of interest.”

The goal for the project is 3.1 million dollars, and Tattrie says they will continue to seek partners and supporters to raise the remaining cost.

Tattrie says the idea for a community hub is partly inspired by the seven community hubs in Calgary, and he says if this project goes well, they may look at introducing a second community hub in Grande Prairie.

As of now, there is no set start date for the project.