Outdoor sports get first crack at reopening
City hoping to lift locks on courts, bike tracks Friday as re-opening plans inch ahead
Racquet sports, skateboarding, and mountain-biking can resume Friday at city-owned facilities in Kelowna.
The city is planning a cautious, phased reopening of recreation sites shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first outdoor court sports to return are tennis and pickleball, though only casual use rather than league or organized play, will be permitted. Players will have to observe physical distancing orders requiring them to stay at least two metres from one another.
Also re-opening on Friday are the BMX track in Rutland and an outdoor disc golf course at the base of Knox Mountain.
“You will see signs posted at these facilities that encourage people to follow directions for safety and compliance with provincial health orders,” Mayor Colin Basran said Wednesday.
All other city-owned recreation and cultural facilities, including the Parkinson Rec Centre, arenas, swimming pools, museums, theatres, remain closed.
The sites most likely to open in the weeks ahead are basketball courts, volleyball courts, ball diamonds, playgrounds, and water parks. These facilities remain closed for now, Basran said, because the style of play they require involves closer contact between people.
“It’s just in regards to how you play those sports,” Basran said. “There’s a lot more contact potential with basketball and volleyball whereas tennis and pickleball, probably not so much.”
Beaches have not been closed and, as the weather warms up, they will remain open to the public so long as city officials believe physical distancing is being practiced to an acceptable degree.
“Beaches are all open and it’s just a matter of people respecting the physical distancing orders,” recreation director Jim Gabriel said. “If that happens, things will continue to stay open.”
Between April 3 and May 11, city bylaw officials received 368 calls related to COVID-19, most from people complaining about others not practising physical distancing.
There were also complaints about certain types of business remaining open in apparent defiance of provincial orders, and four of these calls were referred to Interior Health for further investigation.