The Best Seats
In The House

Located just south of the city’s downtown core, the Heron Road Community Centre has been a staple for Ottawa residents since it first opened. The community hub now offers a wide selection of recreational activities for preschoolers to older adults, including dance classes, piano lessons, summer camps, sports, martial arts and fitness classes. 

The facility also boasts a weight and cardio room, a number of multi-use rooms, a kitchen, a new theatre, and a full-service gymnasium. Having a longstanding relationship with the City of Ottawa, we were brought in recently to assess the condition of a number of existing basketball systems in the aforementioned gymnasium.

With basketball programming ramping up across the city, we headed out for a local site visit, quickly getting to work assessing the condition of the existing basketball systems and surrounding structure. All of the existing systems were mounted to the concrete block walls and were equipped with outdated backboards and rims. While the city was looking for a straight replacement, after our team assessed the condition of some of the blocks, we had to make a tough call and provide them with an alternate solution. 

The city was aware that the systems themselves were in need of replacement, ultimately looking for new glass backboards and breakaway hoops, but were not aware of the risks involved in re-mounting new systems to the existing walls. A few of the blocks had some serious cracks that could have led to equipment malfunction or worse, possible safety risks; something that all parties wished to avoid. 

As a safe alternative, our team recommended that the city look to their ceilings for the right mounting procedure for the six new basketball systems. Given our expertise and our detailed findings, the city agreed that the walls were unfortunately unable to take too many more days of dunks.

Without delay, our team was able to measure and present the new concepts to key stakeholders. With quick approval, the six new ceiling-mounted systems were designed and installed, complete with regulation-sized glass backboards and breakaway hoops.