Despite the hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chestermere Regional Community Association (CRCA) team has kept a positive outlook and completed necessary renovations throughout the year.
“Everybody has had their share of hardships and gone through some things they didn’t want to go through, or things we didn’t even think we were going to go through in 2020,” said the CRCA General Manager, Jody Nouwen.
“There are also some positive things that happened at the rec centre, and it’s important to remind ourselves of that to keep us pushing through,” she said.
In March, the CRCA was mandated to cancel community events and shut down day camps and out of school care.
When it was safe to do so, the CRCA flipped the programming services offered into facility rentals.
“Instead of offering the programs, we allowed people to rent our spaces and make sure we provided them safe spaces to play in and focused on bringing enjoyment to families through recreation which is something that we hadn’t been as focused on,” Nouwen said.
In addition to focusing on facility rentals, the CRCA also repurposed spaces such as the curling rink, as the curling club didn’t have the registration numbers due to COVID-19 to run through 2020.
“Since we knew we weren’t going to be putting the curling ice in, we were able to work with the Chestermere United FC, and they helped us procure some turf in the curling rink, instead of curling we know have soccer turf,” Nouwen said.
“We were able again to repurpose and able to rent out to a lot of users that wouldn’t have been able to use the space, that would have just been sitting empty,” she said.
In March, the CRCA also received the final grants and funding from the City of Chestermere, Rocky View County (RVC), and the provincial government to complete the roof renovation in the red arena.
“We’re happy to say that it’s complete and safe and gave us something to get done while we were mandated to be closed, which was a positive,” Nouwen said.
“Thank you to the people who were able to fund the projects, the City of Chestermere, the county, and the government of Alberta. Without those important grants we wouldn’t have been able to do what we got done during the pandemic,” she added. “We’ve very grateful to have support from other organizations.”
Nouwen was also able to keep staff members through the most recent shut down to paint the main hall.
“The last time we painted it was a dark blue, it wasn’t really welcoming and inviting to some of the larger events and weddings. Now we’re making it bright, clean and spacious. We know that one day this pandemic will end and there will be a lot of people that will want to get married and host big special events, and we’re excited to welcome them into a nice big, bright hall,” Nouwen said.
Adding, “I’m excited I can hang on to some staff and get some much-needed work done in the facility.”
The CRCA grounds were also open to families taking their fall family photos this year.
“We have been thinking of innovative ways to get the community to help out. We opened up our grounds for people to come and take their family fall photos because we have this great space there that’s usable,” said the CRCA Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Melinda Lundy.
“Although we can’t be together, you can still use the space for things like that,” she said.
Going forward, the CRCA team is excited to reopen when it’s safe to do so and continue offering recreational opportunities for families.
“We’re not 100 per cent sure our direction in terms of recreation programming specifically by the rec centre, it’s given us a chance to review our operations and make the best decisions that’s best for the community, and what’s best for the facility. We’re looking forward to finalizing our decisions on that to move forward,” Nouwen said.
“We can’t wait to welcome everybody back to the facility from staff to customers to anyone who wants to come and play at the rec centre,” she said.
In 2020, the CRCA was awarded a grant to make a new youth centre. However, due to COVID-19, the team was focusing on other projects throughout the facility.
“Our funding can be extended to get this built and have an opportunity for youth to have a safe space to recreate in,” Nouwen said.
The youth centre will be a dedicated place for youth in Chestermere to receive homework help, play pool, video games, shoot hoops, or kick a soccer ball around.
“We’ll be working on that and hopefully opening that in 2021,” Nouwen said.
Through the mandated shutdowns, and programming changes, the community and regular rec centre users were understanding.
“Everybody was really understanding. For the most part, we were mandated to not run a lot of our programs. When we looked into potentially bringing some of them back a lot of our numbers were low, people still weren’t comfortable returning to things like out of school care, it became a balancing act between the financial side of it and how many people would actually be attending,” Nouwen said.
“I know there were some disappointed people not able to use the out of school care because it’s such a great program. There were some disappointed parents, but in the end, we didn’t have the numbers to be able to feasibly operate,” she said.
Adding, “It was unfortunate, but people respected that we were trying to stay safe and make sure our other side could stay open.”
Despite the challenges the CRCA has had to overcome through 2020, being able to bring families together to recreate safely was a highlight for Nouwen.
“The fact we were able to bring families together to recreate, make it a little more affordable, switch some of our spaces, and being able to get some projects done,” Nouwen said.
“It wasn’t all happy joy. It was really difficult to have to lay staff off and unfortunately not be able to carry the whole team through the year. Those are some of the most devastating things that as a manager you have to deal with,” she said.
To stay up to date on programs and services offered through the CRCA, please visit, https://www.chestermerecrca.com/.
