With the summer season starting to wind down, work at Shell Place is coming along nicely.
Crews are now getting into the homestretch on landscaping work, and will start laying turf before the end of the month.
Regional Recreation Corporation CEO Tim Reid says people will start to see big changes.
“First thing they’ll see is the field at Shell Place will be starting to get green, and that SMS Equipment will go from a big dirt pile to something that starts to look like a football/soccer/rugby pitch. And so in the next couple weeks the field will be laid,” he said.
He says the only thing that could delay that process is out of their control.
“Any time that you work on capital projects in Wood Buffalo you have to keep an eye on the weather. And unfortunately it’s that one thing that you can’t control. And so we feel very confident that SMS Stadium will be completed, which is our biggest risk initiative outdoors,” he said.
As well, plans have been added to build a public transit hub beside the new fieldhouse, to increase accessibility.
Reid says it could help mitigate some issues the island continually runs into.
“The biggest benefit that I see is this a place where people go anyways, it’s a destination location within the community. And if we can have public transit that’s easier to access, that solves some of our parking challenges, it solves some of our accessibility issues,” he said.
