The Best Seats
In The House

With less than a month until the official beginning of the spring season here in the Northern Hemisphere, municipal planning for parks & recreation and outdoor athletics is well underway.

Operators, managers, and maintenance crews are planning, inspecting and making checklists, verifying and highlighting where the necessary improvements or upgrades are required.

Beyond the obvious sports equipment requirements, amenities are also a very important part of the planning process, ensuring visitors have everything they need while enjoying their outdoor recreation this summer.

With Major League Spring Training already underway, it won’t be long before the boys and girls of summer are back on diamonds across North America. With the anticipation of warmer weather and the impending spring and summer seasons, facility operators, league managers and volunteers are looking forward to the 2020 season.

As such, depending on your geographical location, field conditions are being assessed and as we approach another season, any needs that weren’t taken care of last year are likely at the top of the list (or will be quite soon!).

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is the largest school board in Eastern Ontario and the seventh largest by school population in the Province of Ontario. With a heavy presence in the Ottawa region and close to our corporate HQ, we naturally are fortunate to do a great deal of business with this particular board.

Spanning 143 schools, it is no surprise that we have long-established relationships with key stakeholders not only from the board but also from many of the individual schools as well.

In addition to a number of upgrades performed in the latter portion of 2019, we were asked to visit three schools here in the Greater Ottawa Area that were in need of folding partition replacement. Given the often unsafe nature of outdated gymnasium dividers, it is often the mandate of schools and school boards to have these systems replaced well ahead of any problems that might surface over time with repeated use.

Blending recreational activities with downtown living in a city as large as Toronto is no easy feat. As Canada’s largest city and North America’s fourth largest in terms of population, a great deal of planning was required in the execution of a project in such a large urban centre.

This was quite apparent with one of our recent projects that kicked off in 2019 and which was completed earlier this year. During the summer of 2019, we were contacted by Victor Ford and Associates, an award-winning landscape architect firm with roots in western Canada now located in Toronto. Providing sustainable and creative designs that are functional, aesthetically pleasing, durable and practical is what VFA specializes in and we had the opportunity to learn that first hand.

Nestled high in the great Canadian North, the Northwest Territories is an expansive swath of land covering nearly 1.1 million km².The remote landscape is made up of forest, mountains, tundra and a number of islands dotting Canada’s Arctic archipelago.

In the central region of this vast Canadian Territory lies the city of Yellowknife. As the only city in the territory, the province’s capital resides along the northern shores of Great Slave Lake.

It was here where we were invited to participate in one of our most recent projects. As part of the Yellowknife Education District No. 1, we were invited to Sir John Franklin High School located in the eastern portion of the city. In search of a replacement solution for an outdated partition, our team was brought in to assess its current condition and provide a long-term solution to the gymnasium’s separation needs.

With the continuing increase in mental health awareness, more and more educational facilities are turning to safe rooms, de-escalation rooms, sensory environments and the like to the keep students safe and happy while at school.

Over the past five years, our team has been involved in the process of designing, consulting and installing these types of highly specialized environments across North America. These spaces can be found in schools, mental health facilities, addiction centres, hospitals and private residences, and research shows that when utilized properly, these environments are extremely beneficial to their users.

As part of a mandate from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the largest school board in Eastern Ontario, we were again invited to participate in a safety-focused project. As with any piece of aging equipment, there are times when replacement simply makes the most sense and when it comes to outdated folding gym partitions, this is often the case.

These bulky structures, often installed decades prior, can become unsafe and in some cases, have proven to be fatal for students and participants. In the interest of safety, schools across North America are painfully diligent in maintaining and inspecting any of these active systems. When it is recommended that they get replaced, most don’t delay in getting the right team on-site to begin the process.

Incorporated in 1972, the neighbourhood of Bramalea was created as an innovative “new town” as part of the city of Brampton, Ontario. Created by farmer William Sheard, the name of the community is made up of the BRAM from Bramption, MAL from Malton (a former neighbouring town) and the LEA from the old British word meaning meadow or grassland.

As part of this community, the Bramalea Baptist Church as founded ahead of the new town’s development and has been a staple in the community since its inception. Seeking to serve the spiritual needs of the greater Brampton community, the church has served as a hub not only for religious practice but also for community learning and support programming.

If your facility is fortunate enough to have a retractable bleacher system in place, you likely cannot imagine life without it. These systems are particularly handy in spaces such as gymnasiums, lecture halls, pool decks and other spaces that require a little flexibility and versatility when it comes to seating.

For these reasons alone, there truly is no better choice than purchasing a bank or two of retractable bleachers that easily open or close on command (in some cases by manual command).

Much is riding on your seating and the moment it becomes unsafe is the moment it becomes a serious concern for any facility manager. With safety being of paramount concern, irregular operation of any kind should be carefully inspected and any problems exposed, and remedied right away.

Working locally here in the Ottawa area, we were involved in another exciting project with the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB). Covering an area of roughly 2,900 square kilometers in the National Capital Region, the OCSB is home to over 4,600 staff members and operates a total of 85 institutions including 69 elementary schools, 15 high schools and one intermediate school.

As part of some sweeping upgrades to a number of the schools under the board’s management, we were invited to scope a unique project for a couple of the schools not far from our headquarters.

As is common in many aging educational facilities, some of the athletic equipment previously installed inside the gymnasium can become deemed unsafe for use by students and staff members.

One area of great concern and one which we have years of experience in handling is the demolition, removal, and replacement of outdated partition walls used to separate athletic spaces, mainly in gymnasiums.