Port Moody doesn’t have enough soccer fields.
In a community of 33,000 people that supports some 90 soccer teams from minis to adults, Port Moody is not keeping up with the Joneses — i.e., Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and, especially, Burnaby, where it seems every undeveloped acre is turned into a field complex, rather than paved over for high-density condo development.
Port Moody teenagers and adults have only three places to play a real soccer game: two artificial turf fields (at Heritage Woods secondary school and behind the rec complex) and one full-size grass field at Heritage Mountain elementary (currently chafer beetle-infested).
As a result, far too many enthusiastic Moody mini soccer players, as they get older, choose to leave the city to join clubs in cities with better facilities.
Perhaps PoMo councillors still patting themselves on the back for turfing the rec centre field — a wonderful project. The development of Heritage Woods artificial turf and grass fields was great but it hasn’t nearly caught up with the burgeoning demand for full-size soccer fields.
Between the city’s pre-occupation with development along the Evergreen Extension and School District 43’s willingness to build schools without fields, it’s a perfect storm of non-support for the City of the Arts’ soccer community.
While it’s true that PoMo has little flat land for developing soccer fields, we are fast squandering remaining opportunities to provide badly needed soccer fields. Over the years, initiatives have been watered down, postponed or killed. For example:
• The old IPSCO lands, where Klahanie now sits, were originally slated to include a large multi-field complex — but that never quite materialized.
• The Moody middle school replacement plans at first included a full-sized field — but that has been changed.
• Eagle Mountain middle was built with no fields because its students can use Heritage Woods’ fields.
• Inlet Park gravel field, now coveted as an overflow parking lot for Rocky Point and myriad attempts to upgrade or expand it into a real soccer field have been studied to death and scotched by city council.
• Ioco field (behind the shuttered Ioco school) is to be sold to a developer instead of being re-developed as a real field.
We need more, full-sized sports fields in Port Moody. There have been and are options:
The land between Murray Street and the SkyTrain — the flat land in the old Ioco town centre or the acres of land in the Suncor Refinery property. How about the Flavelle Cedar redevelopment? The expansion and turfing of the gravel field at Inlet Park is a no-brainer.
It’s time Port Moody council supported its large soccer-playing constituency. Building condos brings demand for fields — a little patch of grass is good but full-sized pitches have been needed for years.
Mayor and council, over the years, have helped make Port Moody more vibrant. We have Brewer’s Row and Newport Village. We have community activities from Sunday concerts at Rocky Point to RibFest, Golden Spike Days to car-free day, making our community a kind of Kitsilano East with all kinds of attractions.
Port Moody has so much to offer millennials, and subsequent generations. Unless you’re a soccer player.
Jim Nelson is a retired School District 43 principal and former Face to Face columnist with The Tri-City News.
