The Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre is a beautiful building and a wonderful advertisement for the Canada Games and for Red Deer College.
The location is fantastic, visible to the QE2 with its traffic volume of nearly 50,000 vehicles per day, or 18 million vehicles per year, driving by, admiring it.
Northbound vehicles would then see the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame taking advantage of the high-traffic volumes, along with Heritage Ranch.
Southbound vehicles would then see commercial ventures taking advantage of the high-traffic volumes. Unfortunately, this happens on the south end of town competing with Gasoline Alley, and to date, Gasoline Alley seems to be winning.
We do have an opportunity to turn everything around.
On the north end of town, we are starting development north of Highway 11A and east of the QE2. It is an empty field with a lake, Hazlett Lake.
Why not build the planned multi-use aquatic centre and the proposed ice rink in this location and take advantage of the traffic-volume advertising possibilities like Red Deer College did with the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre?
How often does a community get a 100-acre lake with two miles of shoreline visible to 50,000 vehicles per day available at the same time as they are planning on building a 50-metre pool and a new ice rink? Once in a blue moon.
Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and even places like London spend millions of dollars creating a man-made lake. We have one available. Opportunity is knocking. Will Red Deer answer the door?
Garfield Marks, Red Deer