The site switch<\/a> happened in 2024 with direction from Surrey City Development Corporation (SCDC), the city\u2019s for-profit real estate development company.<\/p>\nFast-forward to 2026 and the current civic election campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be a much larger facility than the one planned by the previous administration,\u201d said Locke, seeking re-election as mayor. \u201cThis is a little over double the size for the actual footprint and about three times the financial cost. So it\u2019s a significantly larger project that we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Locke says the 175,000-square-foot community centre, to include two pools, two gyms, fitness area, library, child care and more, will fit well with existing recreation facilities nearby (arena, wave pool).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe buildings you see here to the north are really still in good shape, and they still have life to them, so they\u2019re going to be around for a while,\u201d she said during a groundbreaking event alongside city councillors Rob Stutt, Harry Bains, Pardeep Kooner and Doug Elford.<\/p>\n
The community centre site was long home to PLOT community garden, which will move to land outside the seniors centre, and a few houses, now demolished.<\/p>\n
McCallum, Safe Surrey Coalition candidate for mayor, says Locke \u201cscrapped a shovel-ready community centre, threw away millions taxpayers already spent, made Newton wait five extra years and now wants applause for it a month before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n
On King George Boulevard, the community centre was set to open in early 2025, McCallum notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrenda Locke became mayor, and the first thing she did for Newton was cancel it,\u201d he charges. \u201cNot because the project was flawed. Not because the money was short. Because it was not hers. And when she scrapped it, she threw away what Surrey taxpayers had already paid for (including) $4.4 million paid to the architects to design it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He promises to build Newton \u201cthe biggest community centre and swimming pool this city has, and we will build it on whichever site lets us build the biggest facilities the fastest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elford, seeking re-election to council with Safe Surrey Coalition, said people can \u201cargue back and forth which is the good side or the bad side\u201d of King George Boulevard for the facility. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe people I work out with at the gym every day, they don\u2019t want to wait, they want to just move forward with this,\u201d Elford said. \u201cWe can\u2019t delay this for another year. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow we can figure out what to do with that Rona site (on King George),\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019ve been pushing for deeply affordable housing for the longest time. It\u2019s a perfect site to put what I call deeply affordable housing, where we can keep our people, our young people, living and working in the community. We\u2019re desperate for that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
SCDC is doing \u201ca look-see at everything\u201d in the Newton core, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s challenging because there\u2019s going to be a change of council potentially, and maybe a change of opinions,\u201d Elford said. \u201cThings can get scrubbed, who knows. It\u2019s a challenging time to make firm decisions, let\u2019s put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Site, size of $311M Newton Community Centre stir debate on campaign trail Published 3:00 pm Tuesday, September 15,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-897934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}