Community centre to get makeover

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This article was published 05/08/2011 (5397 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Phoenix Community Centre is undergoing $300,000 in much-needed upgrades.

Headingley council recently agreed to fund $300,000 in upgrades to the aging  community centre. Work began late last month and is expected to be completed by September.

Club president Sandra Miller said she couldn’t be happier about the news.

“These upgrades give us a fabulous facility to use,” she said.

“This facility is used almost every day of the week from September to June. Whether it is the dance or fitness classes, the nursery school, or people just renting it for birthday parties, this centre is well used and could definitely use the improvements.”

The planned upgrades will include new flooring, new lighting, new bathrooms, a larger storage room, a new kitchen, new carpeting in the basement, new furnaces and air conditioning.

Miller said that the facility has been slowly declining over the years and the upgrades are desperately needed. The current bathrooms at the centre haven’t been operational for years, she added.

“I grew up here and the centre still looks exactly the same way it did when I was a kid,” she said.

Miller said that the facility needs to be better maintained so that the community can continue to enjoy it for years to come.

“The Phoenix community winter carnival is held here every year and it continues to grow every year,” she added. “We need a proper kitchen space for this event so these upgrades give us that.”

Miller said that while the old kitchen was used for the event, the electrical system was unable to handle all the crock pots that they used, so many of them had to be placed in the main hall.

“This gives us a much easier and more accessible site to work with,” she said.

Reeve Wilf Taillieu said that no improvements have been made to the facility since it was built in the 1970s.

“This is a heavily-used facility especially with hockey on in the winter,” he said. “Basically the building didn’t meet existing code so it had to be upgraded.”

Taillieu said the improvements are need so that the centre can better serve the community. He stressed that the upgrades will be made to both the interior and exterior of the facility.

“We are also repaving the rinks and the parking lot to accommodate some casual summer sports,” he said.

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prescott.james@canstarnews.com