Up and Running
The long road to recovery has begun. Last month we saw our first rental income since March, and it was such a relief after months of worry. This burst of optimism is exactly what we all need right now and I’m happy to share with you that many of our tenants are returning or will return in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. However, there are several renters who could not last through this pandemic and will be leaving us. Still, others will be scaling their programming back and we all hope that this is temporary. The programs offered in our community centre are a benefit to all Calgarians and help us keep our surrounding communities thriving and strong. As the GM here at Willow Ridge, I will continue to look for new offerings and respond to requests which can help us rebuild our business to pre-COVID levels. throughout
Condition of Physical Premises
Landscaping
This spring we had a compounding issue of reduced income, equipment failure, and favourable weather. That last point was great for all our gardens but complicated our landscaping needs considerably by creating a proverbial jungle in our backyard. The reduced income (effectively none) meant that we couldn’t hire the third-party contractors we hired in the past and had to handle this task with the labour we had available to us during a pandemic. Courtesy of Lindsay Recknell, our Fields Coordinator, we had an excellent plan to complete this and were on track to renew our turf for next year’s soccer season. Then, on our first mow of the season, our tractor broke. With approximately 25,000m2 of lawn to mow, this was catastrophic to our plans. It also developed that our hand mower was end-of-life, the city wouldn’t allow us to do dandelion control, and hiring an external company to do the cutting was more than prohibitively expensive. Roger, our facilities director, and I worked many hours to keep our fields in decent shape with the tools, budget, and time restrictions but ultimately our goals of rejuvenating the turf were not attained this year.
Eric Festa and Randy Ruston did an amazing job fixing our tractor and ensuring it will run for another several years. I offer them an enthusiastic round of applause for saving us a substantial sum of money at a critical time.
In autumn, we will once again lobby the city to allow us to do weed mitigation. We will simply have to understand our ambitions of having an excellent soccer pitch for 2021 hinge on major efforts planned for spring 2021.
To all our customers and members, thank you for your patience with our landscaping troubles during this unprecedented time.
Sports Facilities
While closed this year, we completed our rink renovation, thereby improving our most-used sport facility and adding a lot of value to our surrounding communities. If you haven’t stopped by recently to check it out, feel free to spend a few hours shooting hoops or playing some ball hockey with your friends and neighbours.
The court renovation project is, at the time of writing this, most likely to be pushed to the 2021 season. Despite our President’s excellent efforts for successful grant procurement, the notion of funding 25% of the renos after the 2020 financial crunch is not as appealing. If this isn’t done in the later months of the 2020 racquet season, then you can look forward to this project in 2021.
Building
While closed, we ensured that all warranty work was completed and that the building was maintained in excellent condition. We’re pleased to announce that the winners of our RFP process for ongoing building maintenance is Iron Eagle Mechanical. I’d like to thank the other companies who bid on this work and wish them much success going forward. Iron Eagle will ensure that our HVAC systems remain in top condition for years to come and our building investment will continue to reward our community.
Welcome Unity Church of Calgary and Topp Kids
Our newest long-term tenant is Unity Church of Calgary and they moved in early in our phased re-opening. Their congregation has already volunteered their time and efforts to improve our building and we’re so happy to have a newly forged relationship with another great group.
Topp Kids is back with us for August, having pivoted their business model to account for the new COVID guidelines. I can honestly say that they bent over backwards to get their program up and running and I think that speaks volumes about their commitment to children.
Craig Peers
