Multi-Purpose Community Centre

I can't stress enough that we've thought outside the box to brainstorm about what resources currently exist within West Regina. For 30 years we've talked in circles about what could be leveraged to provide the wide array of services that are being requested of our organization by both residents and the City of Regina themselves.

 

Going into, and prior to the consultation process we provided the City of Regina through our meetings, the reasons why current solutions don't hit their mark. Below are the facilities that we are asked to rely on to run any programming in the area. Keep in mind that this list includes what would also be available to most of the communities around us, some of which the below won't be accessible for.

 

Jack Hamilton Arena

• Beyond some basic storage needs in this facility we have access to a single room, that up until Covid was generally occupied by a playschool service from North Zone, that is not operational anymore (a noticeable loss to our community in exchange for some space).

• The limited size and layout of the space forces us to reduce the scope of our programs such as Forever in Motion and Yoga.

• The rink area is not all season so sits vacant and unusable for over half the year. When iced, we would have to compete directly with the current bookings to run any kind of ice program.

• This would have been a great viable location to overhaul and turn into a multi-purpose cross functional facility. Especially if it extended out to the surounding areas. We raised this concern/need during the new city-wide dog park consultation process two years ago, but were mostly ignored under the guise of creating an "amenity" in the area through fulfilling the directive of the previous council - even with immediate area, local resident pushback.

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Northwest Leisure Centre

• The RMRCA maintains the stance that this space was built to accommodate North West Regina communities such as Twin Lakes, Lakeridge, Walsh Acres…not ours.

• The NWLC's reasonable accessibility threshold tapers off at Sherwood Drive. Communities like McNab, Dieppe Westerra, and Rosemont Mount Royal are too far away for this to be a solution. Asking residents utilizing community programing to travel that far to access programs is unacceptable and should have been flagged as a problem decades ago.

 

mâmawêyatitân Centre

• This community resource is near Rosemont but out of area for most other communities around us. Our understanding is that they are already at capacity for programming and that it is a cornerstone resource for that specific community. They shouldn't be forced to compete for precious space from outside organizations.

• By our understanding, the body in charge of overseeing this space has a direct mandate to focus on programming that helps the immediate community. Which makes sense for what it was designed to do.

• We also contend that having a multi-purpose space further west could help tackle Central/West Regina's larger socio-economic hurdles which are impacting communities on both sides of Lewvan. At times it feels like the City of Regina views the socio-economic problems in Regina as being boxed into specific communities, but those that live in Rosemont know better. The concerns around drugs, mental health, economic inequality, and more, are both shared by our neighbours to the east and residents in other West Regina communities.

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Local Elementary Schools

• Currently we have access to, and run programs out of, two of the three local elementary schools.

• Covid shutdowns showed us that we can't always rely on the current model of foundations for programming and showed us the importance of have autonomy when it comes to some of the operating decisions for running programs.

• We considered what could happen if either Walker or Rosemont schools were rebuilt, but our understanding by way of our councillor through their contacts on the school board, neither school are on a shortlist to redevelop.

• Although we are very appreciative of current support, the new joint-use agreement doesn't entirely address the problems our organizations face leveraging these spaces or our concerns about autonomy and foundational program/community support development.

 

Former Dieppe Elementary School site

• Our understanding is no community organization is allowed, including the local Dieppe Westerra Community Association, to have access to this resource. Even though it gets used by various other organizations.

• Based on the way the river runs through the communities it makes it a very difficult resource to be leveraged by communities outside of Dieppe Westerra.

 

Martin High School

• We have run programming out of Martin in the past and although they were a great partner, it wasn't without its challenges.

• Similar to the other schools, Covid taught us a valuable lesson around the importance of foundational program support that is autonomous.

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RCMP Heritage Centre

• The cost to rent space from here was not only expensive but when looking at operating community programs, it was not feasible. Further to that, it is cost prohibitive to other community organizations around us that do not receive the same levels of funding support.

 

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