Prairie Rose School Division superintendent Roger Clarke (Photo by Bob Schneider)

By Hayley Ferguson

Dunmore Arena & Training Centre

Cypress County and PRSD arena will not go through for now

Nov 14, 2019 | 5:19 PM

Cypress County, AB – After months of deliberation about a new hockey arena and training centre in Dunmore, Cypress County council has elected not to move forward with the project.

The facility would have been a joint project with the Prairie Rose School Division.

They were asking the council for about half of the $10 million dollar project.

The superintendent of the division, Roger Clarke, said that they were hopeful the project would have gone through.

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“In Dunmore, it’s different than some of our other communities in our area, where a rink or curling area might be a block or two away. But in Dunmore there isn’t anything,” he said. “Having access that close to the school cuts down on transpiration between and lost instruction time to get to some of those sorts of venues.”

While Clarke is disappointed, he says he understands why council made their decision.

“Cypress County is not really different from Prairie Rose School Division. We’re facing some financial challenges now and probably more to come as we see the next budget happening,” he said. “What does that budget mean for them with respect to revenue and how they have to pay for the expenses that they have currently. So I think that’s something that probably weighed heavily on their decision in terms of pulling back from a project like this,” he said.

Council’s decision has put the project on hold, but Clarke isn’t giving up hope that the arena and training facility will one day be built.

For not only the students, but the residents of Cypress County.

“From a utilization perspective, we envision this training centre would have been used dramatically. More than probably any other resources in the city or even other surrounding rural areas. Most arenas, for example, sit empty most of the day until 4:30 when time figure skating and hockey kicks in. The training centre would have been different.”