The price tag attached to the new Fort St. James community centre will be a bit steeper than initially expected after a flaw in the facilities design forced council to allocate additional funding to the project.
Municipal council voted to approved a $30,000 budget increase towards the new community centre during their Oct. 8 council meeting. The funding will go towards designing and implementing a ceiling for the racquetball/squash court being built in the facility.
Initial designs for building seem to have mysteriously left out the inclusion of a ceiling, which is vital to a racquetball court but not necessary for use in a squash ball court.
The possibility of simply scraping the racquetball court and going forward with a squash court only was an option, but given that certain aspects of the racquetball courts have already been built, the town would have essentially wasted money had they chosen to take that route.
Fort St. James resident and racquetball player Tim Dunkley noticed the missing ceiling during an open house tour and brought the matter to the attention of municipal council.
Dunkley said that without the ceiling the racquetball court would have been unusable, in a letter he penned to council.
Kevin Crook, the Chief Administrative Officer with the district and the project manager for the new community centre said that the current cost associated with adding the ceiling has fit the $30,000 budget allocated by council quite well and is, thus far, below the total amount budgeted.
