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Monday, 1 October 2012

Gordon Bell's "field of dreams" installed !

Gordon Bell Greenspace

I have to admit that I didn't think it would happen, but the artificial turf for Gordon Bell's sports field is now down !  To check out what the final version should look like see landscape architect Scatliff Miller & Murray's project page.

Portage Avenue

You may remember that back in 2008 Canada Post bought the site, formerly Midway Chrysler, for a new downtown letter carrier depot that would be needed when their sorting facility relocated to the airport. The community and some politicians intervened and Canada Post eventually settled on another site on  McDermot Avenue.

 Canada Post
 Canada Post
 Gordon Bell Soccer Pitch ?

The province purchased the site for $3.8 m (though this article says it was for $5.3 m) and spent another $1 million on demolition and site remediation. The school raised over $300,000 at various events and fund raising drives.  

It hasn't all been smooth sailing. The School Division was initially cool on the project as the site was not large enough to hold a proper sized field became an issue. The fact that it fits comfortably on the lot leads me to believe it is not a regulation sized pitch.

 Gordon Bell field

Still, earlier this year the contract for the work was finally awarded and work got underway in the spring. Slowly but surely the "field of dreams" took shape.

3 comments:

cherenkov said...

It's interesting that they chose that orientation of the field and made it unidirectional. They could have put in a larger field, but the layout wouldn't have been as elegant.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully there will be little activity in this field.
It is noisy enough with the traffic rushing by but at least that is white noise.
Now I have to put up with a bunch of high school fools chasing after balls and (going by the illustrations) bouncing around on their skateboards.
The dealership was a much quieter neighbor.

Christian Cassidy said...

Well, it's not a regulation size field (is my understanding) so it there shouldn't be league sports there or anything, perhaps after-school practices.