Sports Complex parking to expand

The Steve Omischl Sports Complex will soon get some much needed additional parking

A year into its operation, City Council has given the go-ahead to expand the Steve Omischl Sport's Complex parking lot to the tune of $224,000 dollars.

The facility, in its infancy, is still learning its many uses in the community and province, having seen an abundant interest from sporting groups in some ways overwhelming itself with its own high degree of success.

During tournaments and periods of peak demand, parking at the facility was hard to come by and resulted in concerns about safety and large scale traffic violations around the sport's field as spectators and participants competed for too few parking spaces instead of in their athlete games.

An enlarged parking area will be built along the right side of the complex which will nearly double the amount of paved parking spaces at the facility.

Mayor Al McDonald says that even with the new spaces put in, there will still be some minor issues with regards to parking during peak times.

"But it will go a long way," he says.

Seen as a win-win situation for the City, council seems both proud and reassured that the new facility has garnered so much popularity and demand within the community.

"We're very pleased that the public is really using this facility, but on the other side, it costs money to keep it up to the standards we need to keep it up at," McDonald says.

Councillor Dave Mendicino pointed to the fact that council was able to finance the additional parking area by savings garnered from other capital projects that came in under their projected costs and would require no additional funding from city rate payers.

"There's no new money there," Mendicino says.