The Best Seats
In The House

We’re fortunate to call Canada’s National Capital Region home for a variety of reasons, one of which being, the choice of professional sports. Depending on how long you’ve been in the area, you would know that it was something generations of residents long ago rallied around and eventually built. With CFL football and OHL hockey being long-standing traditions here in Ottawa, we eventually were awarded our own NHL team in the mid-1990s and have continued to expand on athletic offerings ever since.

Given the industry we serve, it’s truly a bonus that we are often called upon to help service and work alongside these prestigious organizations and when the call came in to help out one of Ottawa’s newest franchises, we were chomping at the bit.

With the bats officially swinging now in southern Ontario, this project came to fruition long before this year’s baseball season got underway. During the fall of 2023, the Municipality of North Middlesex reached out to us to help them keep balls in play at a couple of their local ball diamonds and we vigorously answered the call.

With the big bats dominating last year’s season, concerns were on the rise at both Parkhill Park and Ailsa Craig Community Park. With homes located nearby, balls were occasionally landing very close by or, in some cases, inside the yards and key stakeholders wanted to rectify the situation before someone got hurt. Add in the fact that these two ball diamonds were now also closely situated to new skateparks, the municipality wasted no time sourcing a solution to protect those users as well.

Nestled quietly in one of Ottawa’s western suburbs lies the   Amberwood Village Golf and Recreation Club. Situated on 50-acres land, the club is now made up of a challenging 9-hole golf course, a 60-foot heated outdoor swimming pool and 10 brand new pickleball courts.

While the golf course has always been abuzz with local golfers, it is the newly-minted pickleball courses that seem to have experienced the biggest amount of growth. Following the pandemic, the Club went through a number of improvements across all of their facilities, including the pool and pickleball courts. 

Along with the arrival of spring,  the last couple of months has brought plenty of growth. Along with the sprouting of flowers and the budding of trees, it also marks a time for the re-emergence of outdoor sports, including baseball.

Serving as home to the Ottawa Titans baseball team, Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park has been a fixture of Canada’s capital since it was built back in 1992. Having served a number of teams over the years, it’s become a staple of summer baseball here in our fair city.

As one of the largest cities in North America, Toronto prides itself on both having a vibrant urban life and including some much needed greenspace within its city limits. With a number of large parks and places to get away from the hustle and bustle, not many can rival the peace and serenity that lies within the city’s East Don Trail.

Running through the Charles Sauriol Conservation Area of the Don River watershed, the trail makes a wonderful spot for a morning or afternoon stroll. The original trail was extended by 1.4 kilometers in 2020, leaving visitors and residents even more natural wonders to explore and enjoy. A new bridge was constructed as part of the expansion which now includes a variety of habitats including upland forests on the valley slopes, open meadows, young trees and a wetland.

Serving as home to the Carleton University Ravens hockey teams, one of our recent projects landed us at the $13 million Ice House located on the school’s Ottawa campus. Boasting two NHL-sized ice pads along with twelve amazing dressing rooms, this facility is considered one of the Ottawa area’s best ice hockey facilities. 

With regulations requiring safety netting in NHL and other rinks across North America coming into place over a decade ago, many rinks are still continuing to make improvements to spectator safety. As with many sports, hockey is played with a very high-speed projectile that is capable of doing serious damage once shot out of play.

In the spring of 2022, the Town of Havelock was looking  for  the right company to assist them with keeping balls in play. This small eastern-Ontario town is filled with character and up until 2019 was the home of the world famous Havelock Country Jamboree which saw thousands of country music fans descend on the town for the annual festival.

While the pandemic slowed things down musically for the town, life has gone on and as local ball players continue to fill local parks and diamonds, and so the town reached out to us to design, supply and install a custom Netting Barrier for the town's ball field.

In what is being touted as the “Field of Dreams”, this $2.5 million project was put into motion at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As we were forced to find open-air activities to participate in, the lack of quality locations and facilities quickly became apparent.

In search of more quality soccer pitches in the Ottawa area, Ron Palaczka, a coach and active member of the soccer community, reached out to the Maple Leaf Almrausch German Club. This non-profit club was founded in 1964 and is strictly managed by its members, operating as the only German Clubhouse in the National Capital Region.

The conversation between Palaczka and the club would eventually lead to the Field of Dreams project, bringing the second-largest turf field to the National Capital Region. The project includes  a state-of-the-art turf installation with premium lighting fixtures to keep the new FIFA-sized pitch lit up for evening play.

The University of Ottawa is the largest English-French bilingual university on the planet, comprising over 100 acres of beautiful real estate in Canada’s capital. Originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848, the university has grown to become one of the country’s most respected educational institutions.

Donning the garnet and grey, the Ottawa Gee-Gees and their respected athletic program consistently provide a high level of competition and play. With 29 varsity teams to its credit including a fiercely respected football team, the University of Ottawa has the athletic prowess to match its academic prominence.

Up until 2013, the Gee-Gees football team did not have a home field on campus, instead using outside locations such as the Varsity Oval (1881-1953), Landsdowne Park (1954-2011), and Beckwith Park (2012), before construction was completed on Gee-Gees Field in 2013. Situated along the 417 highway which cuts directly through the city of Ottawa, the new stadium provides the team with excellent exposure. We were fortunate to have been awarded the contract to design and build the grandstands that are located in the new stadium as well.

Located around 30km outside of downtown Toronto, one of our recent projects took us to the beautiful city of Markham, a part of the Greater Toronto Area. As the largest city in the York Region, Markham is home to close to 400,000 residents and is home to a number of scenic pathways and outdoor spaces.

With a revitalization project in the works, our team was contacted to help ensure the safety of residents in the area at Morgan Park, one of the city’s most popular recreational spaces. As part of the revitalization, the city undertook a massive renovation to the park’s pool and surrounding area. In addition to the pool, the park is now home to a new children’s playground as well as sports fields such as baseball diamonds.

During the design phase, it was immediately apparent that the new playground scheduled for construction was potentially in harm’s way from the big bats playing under the lights of the community baseball fields.