Trafalgar Park Community Centre, a revitalized and expanded recreational facility, has opened in Oakville, Ont. The 65,000 square foot, $37 million project was designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects to revitalize the Oakville Arena, which has been a community hub for over 60 years.
The Oakville Arena’s distinctive wood truss roof system was preserved and enlarged, and now connects to an adjacent recreational facility. New additions to the space include a full-size gymnasium, running track, seniors’ centre with amenities, fitness centre and public meeting spaces. Meanwhile, the arena’s ice surface was expanded to NHL size, and now features additional seating, new dressing rooms and an enclosed warm viewing area.
“Originally, the community centre addition was to have gone behind the rink and we pulled it to the street to activate the urban landscape and preserve the park setting,” said David Dow, principal at Diamond Schmitt Architects, in a press release. “With the new building almost equal in size to the arena, we established a design dialogue between the two by emphasizing the mass of each – the large scale existing roof is balanced against the mass of the cantilevered upper floor of the new building.”
The Community Centre also features a new fire station, which is located at the corner of the site and includes interactive displays and historical artifacts in a Fire Education and Heritage Room. The Community Centre’s colour palette of whites and dark grey accents has been inversed to adorn the fire station.
This project is one of the first in Canada for a municipal client using the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) model. This arrangement allows the client, architect and contractor to work in close collaboration and operate as a team to apply LEAN principles to design, fabrication and construction. Diamond Schmitt announced that the Trafalgar Park Community Centre opened on time and on budget.
Diamond Schmitt and Graham Construction & Engineering are working on a second IPD recreational facility in partnership with the Town of Oakville. The South East Community Centre is set to break ground this week, and is scheduled to open in Fall 2020. This recreational centre will feature a 25-metre lap pool, a double gymnasium, a fitness centre with running track, multipurpose meeting rooms and space for intergenerational programming.
