Christmas has come early for the North Vancouver gymnasts, hockey and lacrosse players, swimmers and other folks who call the Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre home. It was scheduled to close early in 2022 but, thanks to a dispute between the City of North Vancouver and the developer who was supposed to lease the land, council has decided to keep the facility online until the new one is built in 2025.
Council did the right thing but for the wrong reason. The mayor never misses an opportunity to remind everyone that council’s goal is for the City of North Vancouver to be the “healthiest small city in the world,” which is totally inconsistent with letting their primary recreation facility be demolished.
The city says construction on the new centre is on track to go ahead in 2022, which is good. But it’s still not entirely clear to us why this has happened, how it will impact the city’s budget, or what will happen with the land council was planning to lease to fund the bulk of the Harry Jerome rebuild.
Harry Jerome’s users specifically and the city’s residents generally have been strung along, disappointed and whipsawed so many times by successive councils over the last decade of dithering and debate, we say this council now owes the whole community a debt of clarity and stability until this project is finished in its entirety.
This whole saga is a cautionary tale in how not to build a piece of public infrastructure.
Harry Jerome was, in his day, Canada’s greatest sprinter. Building a rec centre in his name should not be such a marathon.
