City repeating mistake if Fleming is site of new arena
Sports facility belongs close to the centre of the community
It appears city council is again being blindly led down a bike path to Fleming College by city staff.
If they finalize the plan to place the long-overdue twin pad at the college, they will exacerbate the same problem staff created previously by recommending placing the two turf fields and the Wellness Centre on Fleming land.
The two turf fields would have better served the community by being in the heart of the city, at high schools or in parks.
Also, since the Wellness Centre and the YMCA were both built about the same time, many suggested the city and the YMCA should have worked together to build one facility in the central part of the city. It would have given Peterborough citizens a competition-sized swimming pool and recreational opportunities a larger facility could offer. But city council and staff ignored that idea.
Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1843 that government is expected to do the greatest good for the greatest number. Apparently that memo hasn’t reached city hall yet.
This council appears to have not learned anything from the fraught decision of the past council that recommended the twin pad be at Trent University. Besides the environmental problems, its location would not efficiently serve local citizens. Now staff recommends another extreme location.
Why must all the parents of young hockey and lacrosse players, as well as figure skaters, travel to the edge of the city to use this proposed facility? Is it so city staff can again play favour with Fleming College?
It would make much better sense for the twin pad to be placed in the city proper, where there is less strain on our taxpaying parents getting their children to events.
City council must also look at the changing trends in recreational needs of our citizens. Because of former councils’ ineptitude, Peterborough has fallen way behind other comparable communities on arenas. But data shows this twin pad could very well be the last secondary rinks this city will need in many decades.
Also, when future councils finally get around to replacing the Memorial Centre, that could very well be the very last of any prime arenas this city will need for generations.
A page one Toronto Star story Oct. 18, by Francine Kopun, told of a master plan for Toronto’s rec facilities. Due to changing demographics in Canada’s largest city, it proposes 30 new basketball courts, 45 new soccer pitches, 18 new swimming pools and just one new hockey arena in the next 30 years.
Obviously, the demographics of Peterborough are different than Toronto; but the trending is there. The success of the Toronto Raptors has increased interest in basketball locally. Field sports like soccer and football are strong, and softball, baseball, field lacrosse and ultimate Frisbee are growing.
Sean Fitz-Gerald recently published a book entitled “Before the Lights Go Out.” He followed the Petes for a year and was a regular in the Gary Dalliday Media and Scouts room two seasons ago as he researched the book. He believes hockey is losing its position as Canada’s sport, mainly because of costs and diversity of population interests.
He wrote, “People used to say it was the everyman’s game, and it’s certainly not that anymore.”
With this in mind, city council must do its due diligence and ensure that any new twin pad is located where it best serves the taxpaying public of the city, not another perk for a provincial institute.
If council looks at its previous minutes when the Trent decision was made, staff completely ignored some excellent proposals to place the new twin pad; one being in Morrow Park. And what about the GE site?
It is time council stop drinking the staff ’s Kool-Aid and look for a more taxpayer-friendly site for the new twin pad other than Fleming College.
Don Barrie is a retired teacher, former Buffalo Sabres scout and a member of the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame. His column appears each Saturday in
The Examiner.