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Sudbury District Sports Club has funds to build an indoor sports facility

City could have a sports dome by this winter if all goes to plan
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The city of Greater Sudbury may be closer to having its own indoor sports facility than it has been in quite some time. (File)

The city of Greater Sudbury may be closer to having its own indoor sports facility than it has been in quite some time.

The Sudbury District Sports Club (SDSC) has received financial commitment from a private donor to foot the approximately $3 million bill for a sports dome that would house a number of different sports organizations during the winter months.

Board members with the SDSC have been in talks with a local school board and are in the proposal process to build the dome on board property. At current, the SDSC is looking at a large dome (200 ft. x 400 ft. and 50 ft. high) that would house a full-size soccer field, and be able to accommodate a number of other sports.

"We've had meetings with 13 different user groups who are interested in having a space," said Wayne Trainor, president, SDSC. "There are at least 8,200 participants who would be using this indoor sports facility, including soccer, football, frisbee, lacrosse, even indoor drone racing."

In addition to sports organizations that would be able to use an artificial turf surface during the winter, the SDSC has been looking into having a sport court in the same facility that would be able to host sports like basketball and handball.

SDSC were running the city's former indoor sports facility on Falconbridge Road until they ran into some speed bumps amid buzz that an indoor sports dome would be built at St. Charles College. When SDSC was manning the day-to-day at Exhibition Centre, they were on seven month leases and the city was subsidizing the months that the facility wasn't being used.

"When it looked like a sports dome was being built at St. Charles, the soccer community gave up the lease at the Exhibition Centre (on Falconbridge Road) and it then became run by a private company and the city wasn't going to subsidize them," said Mike Graham, SDSC.

"The owner of the building got to the point where they wanted a year-round lease and a minimum of five years."

Without subsidies from the city, the SDSC was left between a rock and a hard place where their choices were vacate the building, or drastically increase the fees for their users. In the end, it was the former that was decided on, and as many as 5,000 soccer players, along with other sports enthusiasts whose sports don't involve ice were left without a place to play.

Greater Sudbury Soccer Club head coach Giuseppe Politi has been vocal in his stance that the city needs an indoor facility as soon as possible, as a lack of a proper place to play soccer in the winter is going to stunt the growth of Sudbury's young soccer players.

Both Trainor and Graham echo Politi's sentiment with respect to smaller centres having their own indoor sports facilities, while Sudbury sits in wait.

"You look at smaller centres like Sault Ste. Marie which has its own facility, and smaller cities in Southern Ontario that have two or three of these places," said Trainor. "How does a city the size of Sudbury not have an indoor sports centre?"

Sault Ste. Marie's Northern Community Centre features two 100 ft. x 200 ft. turf fields and houses soccer, lacrosse, frisbee, and football. It also has its own change rooms, showers, washrooms and a full service concession.

The Soo's facility is a permanent structure, which has been weighed out as an option for Greater Sudbury, but the SDSC is leaning toward a dome that would be taken down during the summer.

"A permanent steel and concrete structure is technically more attractive because it has greater longevity and the operating costs on it are pretty good," said Graham.

"The problem is all of a sudden in the summer your usage falls right off and you're paying heat and hydro and all of that and it becomes very challenging for those facilities to generate revenue in the summer."

This is the closest that the city has been to having an indoor sports facility since the Exhibition Centre closed, and Trainor says that it's just a matter of getting city council on board to expedite the process in terms of zoning and land use.

"It's been at least three years that we've been pursuing this and we think we're as close as we've ever been," said Trainor. "It seems every few months, stories keep popping up about how the city needs this facility and people are largely in favour of it. At the end of the day, we're not asking the city for money, we have somebody who will finance this for us."

If the organization gets approval from the city to move forward with this project, Sudbury could have an indoor sports bubble as early as winter 2018.

Construction would have to begin before November of this year, as the foundation for the turf can not be put down after the ground freezes.


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