By Jason King
ST. JOHN’S, NL – Lack of facilities in St John’s, or the neglect of facilities in existence, is already more and more becoming a problem in the area. Let’s take soccer for a moment. For one reason or another St John’s soccer has only a couple of fields that they have used regularly for training and games and the rest have been tossed to the Leaside.
This past summer for example I know for a fact that many times practices slots were unavailable for a lot of teams due to the fact that The Churchill Park Music Festival was taking place on two separate weekends but because the setup took the better part of a week and the facility was unavailable for sports.
This is all good and fine except for the kids and parents who pay close to $1,000 registration fee only to have multiple practices canceled. One might say well there’s lots of other fields around aren’t there? Yes, you would be right in asking that question because, yes, on paper there are. Multiple other fields around in fact. But due to politics and lack of communication they are not used now. Some of these fields are owned directly by the city but are under the management of NL schools which in reality is only a matter of a conversation and a maintenance contract and these fields would be easily accessed. And in reality it might be a welcome change for the neighborhood because several of these fields are under 4 ft of grass now.
Honorable mention to Holy Cross Field on St Clair Avenue which has both a soccer and softball/baseball field under 4 + feet of growth.
Mary Queen of Peace field, off McDonald Drive, has not not been used or even accessed in years because of lack of maintenance. It has grass so thick that you trip up in it just walking through. Mary Queen of Peace actually has a baseball field in the exact same condition as the soccer field and anybody who’s involved in baseball or softball knows that lack of field space has been an issue for years but because of neglect they’ve been overlooked.
Another part of this situation is that so many generations have passed that people aren’t even aware of those fields in existence because they were in use well before their time. Much like most people probably don’t know that there is a soccer field no longer in use as well as an adjacent softball / baseball field next to the Waterford Valley Lions Club and Waterford Hospital. Neither of which has been used in years.
Outside of these honorable mentions there are still many other options. When Waterford Valley High School was built, a brand new pitch was built in front of the school that gets little to no use. Same for Bowering Park which more than a decade ago had a brand new field constructed for the summer games and has since got little to no use and it is nothing less than an amazing field.
Why?
Why? Because there are no washroom or change room facilities constructed for it. The same was true for the field built at Mundy Pond which is has now been plowed over and houses the new Mews Centre. Once again it dials right back to cutting corners to “save money”. I often wonder where that saved money goes to?.
The old Provincial Recreation Centre on RCAF Road near the airport, just off Torbay Bay Road, is another field that is rarely maintained or used at all and was one time used quite regularly and then there is the Gonzaga School field which hasn’t been maintained in years either and the goal posts on the Nets have more rust than a 1980s Chevette.
Has a lot of this neglect got to do with the installation of field turf on several St John’s area facilities? I understand the desire to have turf facilities because we can start the seasons earlier and finish them later but has it come to the point that because of these turf facilities we’ve moved away from grass facilities? We have neglected our natural grass complexes for artificial turf and yes the artificial turf is nice to look at and stays green year round but essentially it’s just green carpet on concrete.
It’s worth your while to do a Google search of the effect of turf facilities on the human body and you might be actually shocked as to how bad it is for a person.
All weather use
It’s not just field space and availability it’s also lack of amenities for fans and spectators. If any province in Canada can justify the need for protection from the elements it is most definitely Newfoundland. So if that’s the case why have they never built any of the bleacher systems around here with a roof top cop to provide at least some protection from the elements. Almost anywhere else you go you’ll see this setup. It’s only this province you will see the type of setup we have around sports fields. Makes no sense to me. There’s a definite need to readjust our thinking in the planning stages and consider the long-term potential of these facilities
The upcoming 2025 Canada Summer Games are being hosted here and a state-of-the-art facility is being built on the Memorial University campus at the site of the original 1977 Canada Games Complex , which failed to be maintained over the years and was plowed in to make way for a parking structure which is now been pulled up again and replaced with another complex some 40-plus years later.
In the planning stages of this multi-million dollar facility a plan was broached for another million dollars a convertible enclosure could be constructed and this be made a 12-month a year facility. But the suggestion was shot down so once again we failed to have the foresight of the future potential within these facilities.
Lack of sports facilities
Soccer and baseball facilities are just a small drop in the bucket of the facilities issues not just in St John’s but in Newfoundland in general. There’s a huge out cry for gym space here in the Metro region. You can’t find a regular rental space anywhere that’s consistent and if you can find one it’s far from affordable and one would have thought that with the coming of the 2025 Canada games that at least some new indoor gymnasium spaces would open. Not one new gym space has been added. Most gym spaces around are school gymnasiums with the exception of the Paul Reynolds Center, the YMCA, the Reed Center and the Powerplex on Crosby Road. All of which are booked regularly and rental rates are a little out to lunch.
There is another city on facility in Buckmaster Circle, a double gymnasium complex, but when you step inside it’s like stepping into 1985. Brown paneled walls, bingo hall tiles on the floor and a big green Gill net like curtain that separates the two gym spaces there has been little to no maintenance of this facility over the decades the city refuses to put any money into it. When they were approached by a private club organization who frequently rented the gymnasium space, who offered to fix the place up and paint it up and try to bring it into modern era the city rejected them. When questioned as to why they wouldn’t let someone come in and do it for free their response was because then we are responsible for maintaining it!
Is it just me or does that seem a little messed up? But that’s classic city of St John’s behavior. No wonder we can’t maintain a sports team at the professional level in this city we can’t even manage amateur sports to a decent level to have reasonable gymnasium space for them.
Moving on to the ice rink situation here in the city one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard consistently is the lack of ice time available. There’s constant calls for more ice surfaces to be built. There was the big promise of a four sheet complex that was supposed to be built in Galway. All of that seems to be just talk and as there’s never been any ground broken towards construction and this has been talked about for at least 5 years now.
Even with the rinks that are here now there was never any infrastructure put in place for fan seating. For the most part they were essentially an ice rink with a steel structure built over them with no thoughts of hey we might be hosting provincial or Atlantic or national tournaments in these facilities at some point wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually make a space for traveling teams and their families to sit and watch the games.
Once again I’ll chalk it up to cutting corners to save money. I still wonder where all that save money really ends up to.
I witnessed a similar situation a few years back at the e Remax Center curling rink and they are hosting a national curling championship of some sort and I came to realize that there was no way to sensibly watch the games there much like the hockey rinks.
It was just the ice service surrounded by a steel building and on the far end there’s a bar with a big glass window which is great for watching one end of play not so much for seeing the other. You have teams from every Province and territory and accompanying people with them all jammed into a pub at the end of a rink trying to watch their people play.
Even worse for the curling scene was the most recent loss of the Bally Hally Curling Club. Sold off to real estate developer of some sort who plans on filling the golf club with a new housing track.
