Community Centre Addiction

[Northern Light]

Now I want to start this thread off by saying I'm all in favour of Community Centres, and I'd love to see them with longer hours, lower fees and better facilities.

BUT......

I'm starting to think the City of Toronto has a Community Centre Addiction!

What got me thinking about this is the newly published capital plan that shows Eight, count'em 8 additional community centres to be built over the next 10 years, that's on top of the 130 facilities the City of Toronto already has!

That will give Toronto, 138 facilities by 2019.

That seems a bit excessive! I mean that's one rec centre to every 20,000 people roughly, even allowing for projected population growth, not more than 1 to 25,000.

Two quick comparison show Mississauga and Brampton both with 10-12 facilities and populations ranging from 500,000 - 700,000.

That gives a facility per resident stat of between 1 per 50,000 and 1 per 65,000 roughly.

Now there's nothing wrong with having more facilities in Toronto than neighbouring areas, especially since we're not as car-centric a city.

But more almost 2.5x the number per resident today, with an additional 8 facilities on top of that?

Moreover, many exisiting facilities certainly could use upgrades or expansions, or just some maintenance. Not to mention, that the hours for Toronto facilities often see them close at 6pm on a Saturday, and almost never go beyond 10pm at most sites, on any night of the week.

By contrast many suburbs and other Ontario Cities are offering late night service, at least on the weekends, to as late at 3am.

Surely we should invest in what we have first, before adding and endless number of new facilities.

Proposed new sites include City of York (to be fair they had none before, so I get this one); North-west North York; North-East Scarborough, Regent Park, Wabash (north Parkdale); Canadian Tire (Bessarion/Concord Park Place); Warden Corridor; Railway Lands; plus 3 large scale expansions, Edithvale, O'Connor and Milliken.

Thoughts?

Do we really need this many new facilities? Is this a good use of resources?

 

[lead82]

i think it is. Most of the new centres are in areas in need of one or in areas where rapid growth has occurred. The renovations are also needed.

 

[Whoaccio]

Do community centers actually have an official job? Like, what services are they supposed to provide, specifically? I just know them from swimming and voting, but I imagine (hope?) the do more than that.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Note that some are being expanded. How large are the ones in Peel? The square footage and number of programs/events capable of being held in them are far more important than the total number of centres...community centres don't function like fire stations where every house should be within X minutes of one. I'd imagine the Peel centres, assuming they're much newer on average, are mostly mega-sized. As suburbs mature and diversify (or become less diverse), the needs will change and perhaps Peel will build a dozen more. If an increasing percentage of the population lives in master-planned condo communities with pools and billiard rooms and mah-jong clubs and party rooms, perhaps some will close.

 

[Observer Walt]

I think it reflects changing styles over the years. Many of the so-called community centres in Toronto date back several decades and reflect what was considered adequate at the time. I think newer facilities in the burbs are intended to be more of a one-stop shopping place to fill a number of functions.

In Peel, as noted, the community centres are fewer but much larger. In Mississauga, several of them are combined with library branches. As the example, Mississauga Valley Community Centre, close to me, includes under one roof the arena with one ice pad, an indoor pool, a fully equipped fitness facility, a library branch, a daycare, and four or five meeting rooms. The building immediately next door is a gymnasium (the former gymnastics facility, until the gymnasts left for the Hershey Centre a year or two ago). The community centre was originally built in the 1970s but had a major renovation about three years ago.

If you find yourself in northwest Brampton, the Cassie Campbell Community Centre, opened about a year ago, is quite impressive. It includes two ice pads, an indoor swimming pool, gymnasium, fitness club, and a number of meeting rooms. A skateboard park is outside, and a number of playing fields, which I believe are shared with the high school next door.

These places are very much about putting multiple uses in one location.

 

[Northern Light]

In respect of the current size of facilities, the City of Toronto's vary quite widely.

But it has always had many multi-use sites, generally these are labeled CRC ( or Community Recreation Centre) at the end; as opposed to CC (or Community Centre) though there are exceptions.

The City has facilities like North Toronto, which feature an indoor pool, gyms, fitness centre, outdoor pool, and an 1-pad ice rink immediately adjacent.

It also has Community Centre 55 in the Beach, which is much more of a meeting room/community venue space with limited programming, largely targeted at seniors.

****

When I wrote this I wasn't suggesting that the City of Toronto close existing facilities or that it not improve/expand what it has, it was that it really didn't need any additional sites; or at the minimum not 8 new sites.

I would rather see them improve existing sites, and expand hours at the sites they already have as opposed to building unlimited numbers of new sites, most of which will end up closed after 4pm on Sat and Sun!

 

[scarberiankhatru]

So 8 is "unlimited new sites"? With the population in the city of Toronto changing and shifting around so rapidly, it makes perfect sense to build a few new facilities. Entire new neighbourhoods are being built and adding community centres in their infancy is infinitely easier than trying to acquire land and build them later.

 

[Northern Light]

Yes 8 is unlimited.....

You have to take this in context. Toronto HAS over 130 existing facilities, we're not exactly in short on them.

Take a look just at South District (roughly the old City + East York)

http://www.toronto.ca/parks/torontofun/2008-9/Toronto-East-York/TorEYF8W9_FacilityMap.pdf

You've got 2 agglomerations that are staggering, one in the far east (very near where I live)

Roughly north and east of Woodbine and Danforth.

In an area not even 3 square KM .....

You have

1) 2 'Community Centres'
2) A Recreation Centre
3) A clubhouse/meeting facility
4) An Arena
5) Another school with a pool attached (which the City programs)
6) And a curling club (city site)

Now, everyone of these sites is walkable to me, in fact I walked twice that far to High School on many days (more than 15 years ago)

In fact, they are all roughly 1 direction walkable from me, and if I added further east, I would come up with one more clubhouse, 1 more rec center and 1 more school w/pool attached all within 15min walking distance.

That's 8 sites!


Now for all that money and administration cost, you'd think we have fabulous programming.....but wait....

That school pool from the top list.....is only open for like 12 hours a week, 1 or 2 daytime programs, 1 weekday evening and 1 other slot.

That clubhouse is dark 75% of the time at least.

The Rec Centre closes at 4pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Oh, and they built the Rec Centre without a gym! FFS!

I would much rather they combined the arena, current community centre and the school pool on 1 site as a rec centre and then kept it open till 11pm, 7 days a week. I'd like to see the other Community Centre closed, in favour of the other Rec Centre getting its gym, a sauna and a whirlpool and staying open for weekend evenings.

That means 3 fewer facility managers. Lower maintenance costs and more money for longer hours and lower fees.

*****

Over in the west end, in North Parkdale you see something very similar......

1) 3 Community Rec. Centres
2) 1 Arena

All in the area at or north of Queen, at or south of Dundas, all west of Dufferin and East of Roncy.

Oh and by the way, that's where we're supposed to get one of those 8 new facilities.

*****

I'm not opposed to servicing a completely new community (railway lands) especially where the capital cost has been covered by the developer.

But adding more facilities to well served areas is absurd.

I might add the City Aquatics strategy, a very expensive piece of consultative fluff, LOL...... point the same obvious issue out, noting that many Toronto pools are badly underutilized and very few people come when they are open.

They recommended FEWER, but much larger, better pools.

I'm not actually suggesting any NET closures, I just think we should stop building ad nauseum without any clear plan.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

You're still preoccupied with the sheer quantity of sites and not the quality of these sites.

Are expansions possible?

How much would they cost?


Where would the services

be relocated

to

during

*****

construction?

 

[khris]

It sounds to me like the locations serve one or two purposes only, and are more spread out, versus places like Mississauga where all of the purposes are under one bigger roof.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are more community centre type services offered to people in Mississauga than Toronto, even though there are "less" centres.