Yellowknife sports centre attracts major sponsor deal

Major renovations are complete at a new Yellowknife facility being established by three of the territory’s sports organizations, and a new sponsor is on board.

Arcan Construction (styled ARCAN by the company) has signed an agreement to become the title sponsor of the facility, which lies up a hill off Old Airport Road.

The building, once Yellowknife’s Sears and a mechanic shop before its current incarnation, now bears the title Arcan Sport Facility above the front door.

“It’s always been an endeavour of ours, when we’re in a community, to support the local sports and youth programs and leave a lasting effect behind, not just the building that we’re working on,” said Arcan’s Caelin Cameron. The company specializes in northern building design and construction.

“This was an opportunity that looked like we could have a greater reach and consolidate a lot of the small amounts we were spending in communities into something more substantial,” Cameron said as he took his first tour last week.

“It’s turned out better than what I was anticipating and expecting, and it looks fantastic. It’s a great facility for youth to be able to come in and hone their skills and work towards achieving those dreams.”

The facility is a joint venture between Hockey NWT, NWT Softball and the Aboriginal Sports Circle of the NWT. Discussions began after NWT Softball’s Paul Gard had the original idea for a shared facility among multiple sports that could benefit from an off-season training space.

The ground floor is slightly larger than an average elementary school gymnasium. Recent renovations have created an off-season hockey training area and a strip of artificial turf leading to a softball plate in front of some archery targets. More softball equipment extends out from the wall.

“It gives us an opportunity to train year-round,” said Trent Dundas, executive director of NWT Softball.

“We have a batting cage that retracts out from the wall. We can use it through the wintertime. There’s enough space in here for us to do pitching clinics, catching clinics, hitting clinics, as well as space upstairs for us to run umpire clinics and coaching courses.

“It’s a very versatile space that gives us a lot of options to expand our membership and do things we wouldn’t be able to do with our shortened ball season.”

Aboriginal Sports Circle executive director Aaron Wells said Arctic Sports and Dene Games athletes will be able to use the facility to train, alongside the archery teams overseen by the sports circle.

“Our organization delivers a lot of programming throughout the year and we’re constantly renting space, competing for hotel rooms, board rooms, meeting space, training areas,” Wells said.

“Having our own facility where we can do that stuff and not have to be competing against other businesses in town, or others sport organizations, gives us the flexibility and the ability to be more capable and deliver more of those things throughout the year.”

The new sponsorship agreement “is giving us the opportunity to house this place,” Dundas said, referring to NWT Softball’s struggle to meet the costs of programming, staffing and facility space.

“We can’t thank Arcan enough for what they’re doing for us. It gives us the opportunity and the space to do it. We’re not an overly funded organization, so anything helps.”

Wells said other territorial sport organizations are “already knocking at the door” for opportunities to rent the space.

“We are prepared to open the doors and offer this out to other TSOs in the off time when we’re not using it,” he said.

Eventually, more renovation work might follow – but not for the foreseeable future.

“There’s a lot of big-picture thinking happening, but we’re not even close to entertaining that stuff yet. This was a big task,” Wells said.

“We now need to sit down, plan the usage out over the next year or two, and really figure out the ups and downs of running a facility like this before we move on to another phase of renovations.”