The city hopes to meet the growing demand for indoor soccer space by partnering with the Edmonton Soccer Association on a new facility, but doesn’t want other indoor sports to be left out in the cold.
The city’s community services committee agreed to work with the ESA to put together a business case for a new centre that could accommodate other sports such as ball hockey, which are played on a turf-free surface.
“Soccer might be the fastest growing, or the largest, sport in the city right now,” said Coun. Bryan Anderson. “But there is some strong push from ball hockey, which might be the second fastest growing.”
Currently, the city has 12 fields spread across four centres. The city provided the land and the money for the construction of the centres, which is paid back by the ESA through registration fees.
The ESA, which operates the facilities, will be debt free by 2023 or 2024, according to Coun. Michael Walters.
He said he wants to be ready to build something new by then.
“That’s when the population growth will probably really drive us over capacity,” Walters said. “So the timing makes sense.”
City staff and the ESA will need to figure out how much a new facility would cost, where it would be located, and what the timeline would be.
The city aims to provide one soccer pitch for every 55,000 Edmontonians. Right now, there is one pitch for every 67,500 people, and in winter the fields are full about 94 per cent of the time.
To ease demand, adjustments have been made to field schedules, including earlier start times for kids’ games and later start times for adults.
The ESA has also proposed a two-field expansion to the South Indoor Soccer Centre by the start of the 2019 indoor season. The city put $15,000 toward that project.