Curling arena construction allows for shared space

A new wall is cutting off both the Jasper Curling Club’s arena and this year’s season.

Council voted unanimously at a last-minute meeting the morning of Sept. 26 to accept a bid from RWK Construction Co. to construct an insulated wall down the middle of the curling arena at the Activity Centre for $138,660. 

The work will begin Oct. 5 with an expected completion date of Nov. 15. Normally, the curling club’s lease starts Oct. 15 with members getting on the ice by Nov. 1, so the renovations will hold each of those dates back by one month.

The wall will be built down the middle of the arena, where support beams already exist, with two large garage-door openings that will allow the area to be used as one space. The wall will be built into the cement at the base to ensure proper insulation. 

One side of the arena will be used for curling, while the other will be dedicated to the Jasper Gymnastics Club. Yvonne McNabb, director of culture and recreation, said the construction is an attempt to accommodate “a few user groups.” McNabb also said the new wall is a chance to update the arena, which she said is 26 per cent under building code, with an additional support structure. 

She spoke and answered questions at the curling club’s annual general meeting the evening of Sept. 24. 

McNabb told the club that the gymnasts would be out of luck if there were any hold-ups with the construction. “If worse comes to worse, we can get the wall up without insulation and the gymnasts would have to move for the winter,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is get (the wall) in as quickly as possible.”

She added that the change isn’t necessarily permanent. “If the curling club is back up and running again with 300 people, we can go back to a double arena,” McNabb said. “The system is still in place.”

RWK Construction, from Sherwood Park, submitted the lowest of five bids. McNabb said architect Stephen Kozak recommended RWK based on his experience with the contractor. McNabb also said she tried to get the project rolling over the summer, but the architect caused a delay.

Curling club president Doug Albert said members are being positive about the change. “It’ll be a little bit later start than normal, but I think most people are of the mindset that it was sort of an inevitable thing coming down the line,” he said. 

“We were pretty fortunate for a number of years to have eight sheets of ice and the way things have gone the past few years, the size of the club really can’t support it, so it’s just something we have to live with.”

Albert said the biggest change for the club, which usually has between 120 and 130 members,  will be scheduling for tournaments, which can bring as many as 40 teams to Jasper. “What we will have to do now is play more games on those four sheets,” he said. “We’ll start earlier, run a little later and people will have to eat in shifts a bit rather than shut the whole thing down from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.”

The club will make the best of the space it has, as four sheets are more than most area clubs have. “You go to most towns and sometimes they have two sheets, so it’s just a matter of reworking the schedules and living with it,” Albert said. “We’re all trying to be very positive about it and that’s just the way it is.”

Gymnastics club head coach Nadia Wassef said the wall is going up because the municipality agreed it was time to make better use of the space. “It gives the curlers the opportunity to curl while gymnastics is going on, both can go hand in hand,” she said. 

“Obviously there are a lot of people in town who are curlers that want to keep their space, but I think it will be great in the long run.”

Wassef said she and the 100 gymnasts in the club are looking forward to the wall going up. “To have that is giving us the ability to run the programs,” she said. “I’m very excited.”

The construction of the insulated wall is the first of several phases set to upgrade the Activity Centre. Phase two includes plans to move the fitness centre to a new building that would be attached to the Aquatic Centre, for which the municipality is awaiting a grant.