Rec centre faces late spring or early summer completion
By Chris Simon

The Innisfil Recreation Complex.

It could be late spring or early summer before construction of the Innisfil Recreation Complex is complete, says the town's chief administration officer.

Town staff and officials met with site contractors and members of the Simcoe-Muskoka YMCA on Friday, to find out how the $29-million project is progressing.

"Now that we're shifting from completing the cold side moving to the warm side," said CAO Larry Allison. "The meeting went quite well. We really focused on making sure that we had a sound schedule that we could deal with coming through the spring.

"The concern is the mechanical and computerization with the warm side is new to us, and is a little more complicated than the colder side. There's still lots of room for there to be a hiccup."

Plans for the opening of the outdoor sports fields have also been pushed back. They were expected to be open in time for the start-up of summer sports programs. However, problems with a site contractor have likely pushed the field opening to late summer at the earliest, said Allison.

"There was a couple of setbacks the project had," he said. "One was structural steel, the other was the site work contractor. There is a different site work contractor there now than there was before. That had some cost, in terms of (time)."

The complex was originally scheduled for completion in November. However, a Roofers Union strike caused about two months in construction delays, while site engineers have had difficulty purchasing certain materials like steel from suppliers.

The site's large arena opened in November, while the smaller rink is expected to be complete by the end of this month, said Allison.

In addition to the rinks, the recreation centre will feature an aquatics facility, gymnasium, fitness room, and community space once complete.

Although the delays are inconvenient, the project is currently under budget and will provide residents with a stateof the-art sports facility, said Allison.

"The rec centre numbers remain at or below budget. There's still lots of things that could go wrong in terms of the details on the mechanical stuff," he said. "It's a very large undertaking, and some of the other major projects in the (Greater Toronto Area) are experiencing similar issues.

"There's a lack of qualified trades, and that's contributing to the problem. We don't want to sacrifice the quality of a product that's going to be there for 50 or 60 years."

Innisfil's other large-scale building project, the new Town Hall, is closer to completion.

Staff will be moving into the $10 million town hall between Feb. 22 and 25, with the site officially opening for business in early March.

The town hall will have several upgrades over the current administration building. It will include handicap accessible council chambers with a 150 seat public gallery, three community meeting rooms, and a customer service centre near the front entrance. The third floor of the building will contain 1,000 square feet of extra space, which could be leased out to private business owners until the town needs to expand its offices.