Proposed Thunder Bay turf sports facility takes step forward

Thunder Bay City Council will make a key decision about a proposed, $30-million indoor turf sports facility later this month.

On Monday, council received a first report about the project recommending the project be approved in principle, and work begin on prepping the Chapples Park site for eventual construction.

Council was initially slated to vote on the recommendations on July 22. Instead, they voted to move that decision up to their June 24 meeting.

Smaller fields

Kelly Robertson, the city's manager of community services, said Wednesday the proposed facility includes an indoor synthetic turf field that would be, under current plans, 95 metres long and 52 metres wide.

Michael Veneziale, president of Soccer Northwest Ontario (SNO), said, however, he has questions about those dimensions, especially considering the large field is being designed to be broken up into four smaller fields to increase capacity.

SNO recently commissioned its own report on a turf facility. Although the facility itself was about the same size and cost, the field included in the SNO study was larger than the one included in the city report presented Monday.

"You're looking at something that's about 15 metres shorter than the LU Hangar, which is, in most peoples' opinion, okay," he said. "But where I'm a little bit worried, is it's only 25 metres wide, and that's what's happening when you're trying to fit four fields into a smaller overall field. So hopefully that's something that can be talked about and looked at."

Multi-use

Robertson said while research has shown the main users would be indoor soccer players, the facility is being designed with many other sports in mind, including ultimate, baseball, football and tennis.

Robertson said nothing is set in stone yet. Still, the city came up with the size of the field through consultations with users, and comparisons with other, similar facilities elsewhere.

"I've had some reassurance that it could work," she said. "I'm not going to say that's the case with every group, and that's part of what we're going through now."

"Groups have a chance to review the report, and provide feedback."

However, Robertson said, increasing the field size will increase the cost of the facility.

"There is a segment of our population in Thunder Bay that question we can we afford," she said. "We'll see what the feedback is, but so far, I think that it's been positive."