The Municipality of Tweed is creating what’s being called the Preliminary Community Centre Task Force to look into the potential replacement of the Tweed Hungerford Community Centre.
“We recognize that our arena is aging. It’s been here forever and at some point, we’re going to have to replace it,” Tweed Mayor Don DeGenova tells Quinte News.
“So what we wanted to do is we thought, well, there are other things that we need in this community. So we decided to create a task force to look at what a new community centre would look like.”
DeGenova stressed that this would not be something that would be done in the next year or five years but rather getting plans in order for the future beyond.
He says the committee would be taking several steps.
“The committee will reach out to residents and find out what we would like to see and we’re looking at perhaps a new arena, a fitness centre, a walking track, aerobics studio, meeting rooms, that type of thing, but we want to see what the community says,” DeGenova says.
“Once we do that, we will then move to the phase of finding where we would like to build it and looking at the necessity of acquiring land, and at the same time, begin to look at architectural drawings so that we can be ready and start raising money for it.”
The following recommendations were put together to council on how to form the committee.
- Two council members
- CAO/Treasurer
- Manager of Community Development/Parks & Recreation
- Parks & Recreation Supervisor
- One member from minor hockey
- One member from figure skating
- One member from agriculture community
- Two members of youth
- One member of seniors
- One member of the community
In a report to council, the manager of Community Development Rachelle Hardesty says having an integrated Community Centre will save on capital and operating expenses as well as improve the municipality’s service deliver over the long term.
