Recreation Facility Infrastructure Standards and Strategy

meeting rooms

A meeting room or rooms which can hold up to 80 with a series of closets along the walls. Each interest group wishing to hold their monthly meetings would be assigned a lockable closet to hold the library of books and other equipment belonging to the group.

Many centres are too large and impersonal and not well suited to the needs of local communities whose needs are often more basic.

shelving storage

Hello again Elizabeth.. shelving inside the room would be best as it is sometimes difficult to carry lots of heavy books. Perhaps there could be one or more walls which are a series of lockable cupboards. I think this is really important to support adult activities other than sports.

Facility design and requirements are too focused on team sports

Soccer, tennis, basketball, and hockey are great, but many people prefer cultivating individual sports such as track and field, dance, yoga, parkour, gymnastics, or martial arts. It is difficult to find safe, open spaces (even just an outdoor track or an empty room somewhere) to practice these sports by yourself and not in a class. When you can't find space for the sports you want to do, it's frustrating to see so many group sports facilities (rinks, pitches, etc.) that sit empty when not used by teams. Please take this into consideration when designing new facilities, and leave some open spaces for people who like to move but don't play on a team.

More smaller centers

Many of us in the downtown core do not own a car. Rather than large centres in single locations, can we have more smaller centers that are accessible (Plant Bath is a good example)

Multi-purpose space in community park facilities for use by community associations and other local groups for a wide range of activities.

Half of our current park facility is leased out to a baseball group that is not associated with the community while we have no space for community gatherings. This policy needs to be changed to give priority to multi-use space that supports a variety of locally-driven activities.

obstacle course type apparatuses

Make obstacle course race type apparatuses....rings to swing on, rope climbs, long monkey bars or rig structures with grip features like rings/pipes/t-bars. 6/7/8 foot walls and Irish tables to climb over. Tree stump mazes to manouevre through...up/down and side to side. No sport is like OCR which encourages speed, power, endurance, agility, grip strength and technical skill. If you want to promote physical fitness and overall health, these types of structures appeal to children, teens and adults and work on so many muscle groups while actually having FUN too. If you want more examples/pictures, just PM me back. Go to any playground now and you don't see a lot of kids using the structures as they are designed to be used...instead they are climbing/hanging/swinging like apes and trying to stay as high off the ground as they can (including me! :) The nice thing about these is that they are accessible by the public any time of the day for many months of the year in Ottawa.... with no booking or fees necessary. THAT is what makes a great option for the city as far as accessibility is concerned! You also wouldn't need tons of land to make them happen. And if you make them high enough off the snow/ground then many WOULD be used year round. Take a look at the structures you can find on beaches in California like Santa Monica where they even have long ring swings and huge rope climbs.

Re-develop & Re-purpose existing facilities and fields for new uses

The city owns many recreation facilities and lands located in key parts of the municipality. The ownership of these lands and existing facilities means they can re-developed and re-purposed. For example, many ice pads would get better use as gymnasiums for basketball or volleyball, or as in door soccer facilities. The picture to the. right is of a "centennial" arena in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Similar re-purposing of Ice rinks takes place in many places and Ottawa should be no different. In many cases, the re-purposing could be eligible for federal "carbon reduction" funding to renovate. One published estimate suggests older ice rinks use about $11,000.00 per month in electricity. Shutting down the ice plant - because we have more rinks than needed, could free up funds so that renovation pays for itself.

Indoor velodrome with dedicated fitness area or sports athletic area or squash / basketball in the center.

There are a couple of veledromes in the GTA and in Quebec where they use the space in the middle as a unique indoor fitness area. London Ontario recently converted an ice rink into one rather than renewing the ice plant but there is potential to have an indoor running track or ball courts in the center of the track.

Year Round Facilities for Ice Sports in South Rural Ottawa

All ice sports scramble for ice during the Off Season from April to September. Limited ice availability as facilities close for maintenance and the Spring/Summer months means training time is limited to our athletes. Aging ice surfaces have many issues including additional repairs required, added costs to keep the ice at appropriate quality and sound quality issues at some facilities. Ice rentals costs are also of concern to our group as ice fees increase we need to charge more for our programming which limits who can afford to register our programs.