THUNDER BAY -- The Fort William Curling Club president says the club could last another two decades in its current location, despite recommendations in the city's draft Recreation Master Plan to wither the facility.
As part of the plan's recommendation to twin indoor rinks at arenas across the city while closing others, it recommends looking into adding curling to "any new investment in community ice" with the explicit aim to "allow Fort William Gardens to be fully disposed of or for redevelopment..."
It recommends decommissioning the ice and investing in hard surfaces including tennis.
As the club celebrates its 125th anniversary, Stan Nemec insists there are a lot of good years ahead for the club that donated the land for the city to build the Fort William Gardens in the first place.
"I think we have a good 20 years left in this location where the facility is now," Nemec said, citing the facility's consistent ice and the club's recent $40,000 investment into kitchen renovations.
"Occasionally we have a roof leak and that becomes an issue but for the most part, the facility, even without the (Fort William) Gardens, can stand alone."
Nemec believes the local curling scene is as dedicated to the social aspect of the game as it is to the sport itself and that curlers are true to their clubs.
"It's like a family. Curling is a social game and people tend to stick together," he said.
"You go into the our club ion any given night and everyone knows everyone. It's a social thing. We're competitive but there's a huge social aspect to curling."
The master plan pre-supposes the city will build the Thunder Bay Event and Convention Centre at some point. It found the Fort William Gardens to have the highest Facility Condition Index of any facility in the city, meaning the cost of repairs to the gardens over the next 20 years would cost 28 per cent of the value of replacing the entire facility.
If building curling ice elsewhere is found to be unfeasible, the master plan suggests reverting to the Fort William Gardens' 2014 Future Reuse Assessment, a renovation estimated at $9,832,450.
Nemec said the club took a step toward independence in the days prior to a narrowly-averted city worker strike early this month. The curling club shares an engineer with the skating rink but Nemec said his club is looking into managing ice production on its own.
"The ice plant runs both facilities but there's a way of splitting the ice plant up so we could run independently from the gardens," he said.
"It was too late to dos something the particular time in case of a strike. We're looking at possibly doing that at some time."
