Burnaby cancels Confederation Park Community Centre

Last August, city staff came to council with the recommendation that the city defer the Confederation Park Community Centre project due to a lack of funding. The original proposal was to delay the project until funds became available. During its Jan. 28 meeting, council approved a new staff recommendation to cancel the project. 

A staff report outlined several options for council to consider, the first being to abandon the project entirely. 

“This option proposes deferring the project until there is increased demand to enhance recreation service provision in the Northwest Quadrant, adequate funding is secured, and the project aligns with the City-wide facility needs and implementation strategy specified in the forthcoming Parks, Recreation, and Culture Master Plan,” the staff report said. “Implementing this option would require terminating existing contracts, incurring associated fees, and initiating a new procurement process in the future when needed, with construction costs expected to rise by 4-7% annually.” 

Abandoning the project would cost the city approximately $15.8 million. 

The second option is to redesign the centre, making it smaller and less costly. The city had initially planned to cover the centre’s costs through its Community Benefit Bonus Reserve (CBB) which was cancelled when the provincial government imposed new zoning rules. After CBB was cancelled, the city added the Confederation Park Community Centre to the newly created Amenity Cost Charge (ACC) program. However, the ACC program is still new and has not yet accumulated enough funds. 

According to the report, “This option proposes redesigning a smaller Community Centre that aligns with the city’s vision of an accessible, multifunctional community space. The new design would prioritize energy efficiency, sustainability, and cost optimization while expanding programming opportunities to meet projected future community needs.” 

The redesigned, smaller community centre would have cost approximately $160 million and opened in 2029. 

The redesigning option is split into two further options; in one option, the project is deferred until the city accumulates enough funds in the ACC program for the project to proceed. The second is to proceed with the project by borrowing funds from the Municipal Financing Authority of British Columbia (MFABC). 

During the council meeting on Jan. 28, several councillors said they were “disappointed” by the recommendation to abandon the project. 

“To me, I really still wanted to move this project forward because it’s long overdue,” Coun. James Wang said.  

“Mayor, I express my disappointment. The neighbourhood has been waiting for it. The plan for Confed started about 12 years ago, being promised to the neighbourhood. We had allocated funding for it,” Coun. Pietro Calendino said. 

Calendino added that this option would save the city the funds it has already spent on the project and “would make a lot of people happy.” 

Coun. Sav Dhaliwal agreed with Calendino that abandoning the project disappointed many. However, Dhaliwal supported the recommendation to abandon the project at this time. 

“​​We cannot afford it,” Dhaliwal said. “To have three or four centres open within a couple of years, you have to give up on one.”

The city’s chief administrative officer, Leon Gous, clarified that the staff’s suggestion is not to abandon any possibility of a community centre in the area entirely in the future, which may be revisited at a future date. 

“The abandonment, as you’ll see in the next report, really has more to do with the current contracts,” Gous said.  

Other council members approved the recommendation to abandon the project instead of borrowing money to build the centre. 

“I don’t think it would be financially responsible to take on such high amounts of debt to build this facility, even again, at the bare bones kind of design,” said Coun. Alison Gu. “That would be, you know, $40 million of just interest payments, and that $40 million could go towards some very meaningful projects at the city if we were to just delay this project.”

Mayor Mike Hurley agreed, saying, “I don’t agree we should ever go into debt.” He added that the next few years are unknown due to the Trump presidency and the possibility of a new federal government in Canada. “It’s time to abandon this particular project and then reconsider how we’re going to do Confederation Park,” Hurley said.

Hurley left the matter with a suggestion that staff return to council at a later date with further recommendations regarding the scope and possibility of the Confederation Park Community Centre project. 

Mintara’s patio almost gets cancelled

Another project was put on the chopping block during council’s Jan. 28 meeting, this time it was the planned patio for Mintara Atop Burnaby Mountain restaurant. In this instance, council rejected the proposal to cancel the project. In March 2024, council approved the project with a budget of  $2,628,300. However, a new staff report came back to council with a different estimate. 

“Scott Special Projects LTD was awarded the contract as Construction Manager for the project in September 2024. Since that time, the team completed the tendering process with the final bid value of $4,224,282. Value engineering exercises were then completed resulting in a reduced price of $3,399,813 excluding GST and contingencies,” the staff report said. 

If cancelled, the city would have had to pay around $20,000 in addition to the $459,465 it already paid for the initial phases of the project. 

During the meeting, city councillors rejected the staff recommendation to abandon the project despite the additional $1M in cost. Several councillors, including Daniel Tetrault, Gu, and Dhaliwal, recommended proceeding with the project, saying it would pay for itself within a few years. 

Councillor proposes a new bike playground 

During the council meeting, Coun. Alison Gu proposed a motion for staff to explore the possibility of a new bike playground in Burnaby. 

Gu’s proposed motion requested that “staff explore suitable site(s) for the establishment of a bike playground close to existing bike infrastructure and according to global best practices, and explore opportunities for funding from other levels of government and institutions such as TransLink, Ministry of Transportation and Transit, Vision Zero BC, and ICBC.” 

Staff will report back to council at a later date with suggestions for locations and further direction before September 2025. 

The project already has $20,000 in funding secured from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which can go towards either hard (such as construction) or soft (such as design) costs. 

The report said preliminary discussions have already occurred with several possible funding bodies. These include: TransLink, The Ministry of Transportation and Transit (MOTT), which provided verbal confirmation of the project’s eligibility, Vision Zero Funding, and the ICBC Road Safety Grant. 

“​​I had the privilege of receiving a grant to travel to Copenhagen, and this is where I encountered the idea. And they are essentially miniature versions of urban infrastructure that can be found throughout our streets. They include bus stops, roundabouts, intersections, and different traffic signs that approximate or mimic our city streets, and their idea is to be able to provide a safe, protected, and comfortable space for children to learn how to ride a bike,” Gu said of the proposal. “One thing that I would really love to do with this idea is to consult with children who would actually be the end users of this facility.”

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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