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City bends on soccer pitch

May redesign path to keep field around

By: Geoff Kirbyson

Posted: 05/20/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Aidan (left) and Ethan Dooley are regulars at Berwick Field, at Pembina Highway and Jubilee Avenue. They hope the field will stick around.

A running, cycling and inline-skating path that threatened to cut through a south end soccer pitch may be reconfigured so hundreds of young players will continue to have a place to play.

The City of Winnipeg sent out a notice last month that the soccer portion of Berwick Field, located near the Pembina-Jubilee overpass, would be eliminated once construction began this month on the rapid-transit corridor and accompanying "active transportation" pathway. But after hearing from the nearby Lord Roberts Community Centre, the city has agreed to play ball in the short term and is considering long-term solutions that will hopefully satisfy everybody involved.

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Randy Fingas, bridge projects engineer for the city, said he's going to ask his contractor to defer starting construction until July so Lord Roberts' spring soccer season can play out in its entirety. "Now that this has been identified as a significant issue to the community, we're going to possibly realign the active transportation pathway as well as landscaping in the area," he said.

Fingas said he has already asked engineering consultants and landscape architects to examine what would be required for a reduced soccer pitch, three-quarters the normal size, to be created instead.

That's music to the ears of Adam Dooley, soccer convenor at Lord Roberts, who pleaded with the city planner's office and Winnipeg Transit not to eliminate one of the two soccer pitches in the neighbourhood.

"We have hundreds of kids playing on this field every week. It would be awful if we lost it," he said.

Dooley said the community centre's mini-soccer program for kids aged four to eight has grown to more than 80 participants. Its youth program has increased to more than 40 kids. The field is also used by some nearby high school teams and a number of adult recreation teams.

"It's full of soccer players until dusk just about every night in May and June," he said, adding he's talking to soccer officials about adding more pitches in the area.

Dooley is likely feeling some extra pressure at home about the soccer situation. Both of his sons, Ethan, 11, and Aidan, 8, play at Lord Roberts.

Fingas said a final decision has to be made within the next month or so.

"We'll see if we can squeeze a three-quarter-sized field in there. We have to go back to the drawing board. We might need to reposition the field and make adjustments to the pathway and landscaping to accommodate their needs and our needs," he said.

Fingas said he has a job to do but he's doing his best to walk a few miles in the kids' soccer cleats.

"The best solution is if we can accommodate everybody's needs. If I lived in that community, that's what I'd like to see," he said.

Dooley said the local soccer parents want to be clear they're not against infill development and rapid transit.

"We think they will be fantastic. But they will bring more people, more soccer players and more need (for soccer fields)," he said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 20, 2010 A5

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