By Sheldon Spackman

Grassroots Efforts

Work continues towards new community hall in Springbrook

Nov 3, 2020 | 9:41 AM

Efforts to bring a new community hall to the hamlet of Springbrook continue.

Last week, Red Deer County council approved a request from the Springbrook Community Association (SCA) to appoint Councillor Dana Depalme to the project’s Design Advisory Committee with the intention of cooperating on a design for a new hall.

SCA Vice President Tariann Bowman says a community hall in Springbrook is long overdue.

“The SCA does a lot of events in the community and we are currently renting buildings, so the events change places depending on what building is available,” she explains. “We really need a ‘heart’ of the community where everybody can meet.”

Bowman notes a wide array of events the association has been known to host over the years.

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“We have Easter events, we have fall fairs and markets, we’ve done Halloween, we’ve done Christmas, we do an annual free community supper. We do a Family Day event with horse and buggy, we are planning on doing an annual St. Paddy’s Day event and we’re planning on doing a chili cook-off here right away. We do quite a few events throughout the year.”

Bowman says multiple organizations could make use of a community hall in Springbrook.

“There’s the Boys and Girls Club, we’re hoping to get a daycare centre in there because Springbrook has a very young demographic. We need a facility that has a kitchen and accessibility. We have accessibility issues because it’s an old base, so we’re trying to ensure we’re hitting all the needs within the community.”

The Springbrook Community Association would like to maintain control of a community hall and to manage bookings and usage, Bowman explained, acknowledging that Red Deer County acquired space in February for leasing opportunities for community programming in the hamlet.

The association is working to secure funding through its own fundraising efforts and government grants.

“We’ve been fundraising for the past two-and-a-half, three years,” Bowman says. “A lot of our events, all the proceeds go towards the community hall funds that we actually have set up through the SCA, so we’ve been working quite diligently and building event attendance for the past three years.”

Bowman admits the pandemic has had an impact on those efforts this year.

“It’s challenging in many aspects because of the economy, but also because we don’t have a place to do fundraising. We definitely will be applying for every grant that we can possibly find that we may qualify for, and continue to do fundraising as much as possible given the circumstances of the times we live in.”

Bowman says they’d like to have a new hall within the next couple of years, but they have to be realistic given the current economic climate.

“We would like to have the plans done up by the end of this year with a couple of different building options, and hopefully get something a little more concrete next year.”

A location for a new community hall in Springbrook has yet to be selected.

“That is in discussion with the county right now,” says Bowman. “There are a couple of proposed sites, but it really depends on the size of the hall and services and utilities that are already run to the land. We have a population of about 1,500 people and there are a lot of halls in Red Deer County that have smaller surrounding populations than Springbrook does, so I think the time for Springbrook to have a hall has come.”