Regardless of which sport you play, the conditions of the court, rink or field – good or bad – factor in to your enjoyment of the game.
So it’s no surprise the badminton players at the Cordova Bay Community Club are growing tired of their aging 67-year-old building.
Purpose built by volunteer labour in 1946, the roughly 7,000-square-foot hall lacks many amenities one would expect at a modern-day recreation facility, like showers and locker rooms.
“There’s a whole bunch of deficiencies. They start at the foundation and work up from there,” said Ron Jordan, president of the CBCC. There’s no rebar in the concrete foundation or insulation in the walls, the wooden posts and beams aren’t well-fastened, the roof will need replacing within a few years and there’s no sprinkler system in the building, he said.
“All those deficiencies meant it was going to be just as expensive to do a complete renovation than it would be to tear it down and build it again.”
Proposed for the existing Sutcliffe Road site is an 18,000-square-foot facility, with eight badminton courts (instead of three), along with a multi-purpose area, bleachers, a pro shop, locker rooms and shower facilities.
Construction won’t begin until development and rezoning applications are approved by Saanich, which could still take months, and Jordan says it could take upwards of three years before the replacement building is complete.
As was done in 1946, CBCC plans to take advantage of as much volunteer labour as possible to keep costs down.
“We have, within our badminton community, people who are in the construction industry. With them as supervisors, we hope we will be able to use people who aren’t professionals to build the building,” Jordan said.
“But we’re looking at putting up the shell (of the building) for $600,000, and another $300,000 to $500,000 to finish it.”
Ideally, CBCC hopes to acquire a $500,000 interest-free loan from the municipality, and then finance the rest through private mortgages.
Before Commonwealth Place and Gordon Head rec centres were built, CBCC was well-used by community groups of all sorts.
But the last few decades have turned the Community Club into a little-known facility, frequented by a smaller, but diehard group of badminton players.
“If we didn’t have badminton and the use of badminton, the building would be in total disrepair,” Jordan said.
For more information on the CBCC, visit cordovabaycommunityclub.ca.
kslavin@saanichnews.com
