Paul Rodgers
The Kootenay East Youth Soccer Association (KEYSA) is now at 90 per cent of their financial target to begin construction of their new indoor sports facility thanks to a $500,000 donation from Columbia Basin Trust (CBT).
“This facility will substantially increase the amount of time people can devote to the physical activities they love,” said Kindy Gosal, Columbia Basin Trust Director, Special Initiatives. “The goal of our Recreation Infrastructure Grants was to help people enjoy more active, healthy lifestyles, and access to a space like this will have great impact upon the well-being of Cranbrook and area residents and visitors.”
Mike Robinson said that they applied for the CBT Recreation Infrastructure Grant in 2017.
“At that time all we really had was a concept and support from the City and community for that concept,” said Robinson. “In other words, we were fairly early on in the process and were correctly adjudicated as such. Over the past year we worked to develop the project further.”
Robinson said they then obtained critical support from the Cranbrook and District Community Foundation to manage donations from local businesses and private donors. Next, they continued discussions with the City to evolved the project and then received the crucial support of New Dawn Developments, who became the title sponsor of the facility, and from the RDEK.
“All of this allowed us to put forth the strongest proposal we could; one that truly described the community support as demonstrated through the financial donations.”
Robinson said that the news that CBT would support the project felt unbelievable.
“We mapped out a process for this project in early 2017. With the news from CBT we can actually say that we are on the fastest track imaginable. CBT’s support was critical and cannot be thanked enough.”
Some outstanding tasks still require completion before ground can be broken on the project. The last 10 per cent of needed money still needs to be raised through fundraising, however Robinson said that they are now considering the pre-construction phase of the project to be substantially complete.
“With this schedule we hope to have construction completed in the fall 2018 to have the facility ready for use by the end of 2018,” said Robinson, who added:
“We want to express our sincerest appreciation to everyone and all of the organizations that have made this a reality. It is overwhelming to see how fast our community has got behind this initiative.”
In 2016, CBT set out to help Columbia Basin residents lead more active and healthy lifestyles by increasing access to high-quality recreation spaces. In the last intake of their three-year Recreation Infrastructure Grants program, 53 new projects were approved for over $3 million.
In total, the program has funded 153 projects with $9.4 million, including over 350 kilometres on 68 trails, 53 outdoor facilities like playgrounds, pickleball and tennis courts, and 15 other facilities like riding arenas and gymnasiums. Projects are located across the region in 42 Basin communities.