Parksville city staff have suggested further developments regarding a proposed aquatic and recreation centre can be likened to the ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma.
Chief administrative officer Keeva Kehler said preliminary design input will help with site selection, and yet without a site selection, it would be difficult to further develop any design of the facility. For now, city staff are at a standstill on the project and await further direction from council.
From Kehler’s report to council, presented on Monday, Dec. 6, Coun. Teresa Patterson favoured the option of simply receiving the information and taking a pause on the project.
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“This project has gone way overboard and it needs to be scaled back for it to continue,” said Patterson.
Coun. Adam Fras said he didn’t see the point of putting the whole project on hold for an undetermined amount of time.
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“This project, while it’s had some hiccups along the way or may be not everything we expected it to be – I don’t see a project as big as a pool in our community being something we’d expect to get a hole-in-one on. And it does take a lot of work,” he said.
He believes the biggest hurdle to overcome would be locating a suitable site for the proposed facility, even if that means considering property not owned by the city.
After further discussion around the table, Mayor Ed Mayne said that “kicking the can further down the street will not get answers.’”
Council unanimously voted in favour of planning for a committee of the whole meeting in mid-February 2022 to further discuss the site, scale and scope of the project.