WATCH: Where might the new Parkinson Rec Centre be built?

• There are two options for placement of the new Parkinson Rec Centre
• Should it go in the current parking lot along Harvey Avenue or near the Apple Bowl
• A recent trip to the Lower Mainland has swayed some councillors

Should the plus-$130 million Parkinson Recreation Centre (PRC) be built in the parking lot or moved closer to the Apple Bowl and future SD23 high school?

That question will be posed to lawmakers Monday, as the ball gets rolling on designing a replacement for the aging facility.

According to council documents, city staff are endorsing what’s being called a co-located campus model.

This design would see the new centre - called the Kelowna Community Campus (KCC) for planning purposes - abutting the southern part of the Apple Bowl and adjacent to a future school.

A list of benefits accompanies the proposal, such as allowing PRC activity to go on uninterrupted during construction. By having the new facility near the school, it can create more opportunities for shared use. It would also be a boon for allowing programming to expand into the recreation park.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI) has also supported this model.

“Facilities such as changerooms and event support space can be accessed from the indoors and outdoors, supporting various tournaments, track meets, and festivals,” documents read.

Some concerns for this placement include the need for additional parking and narrow access from Spall Road. However, workarounds are presented.

Building a new centre in the PRC parking lot would make the facility highly visible from Harvey Avenue and allow for minimal site impact. However, the space needed during construction could be disruptive to programming and parking would be limited. MoTI also raised concerns about the traffic pressures to Harvey Avenue, which already experiences heavy congestion in this area at peak times.

The new facility would also be surrounded by parking lots, which, according to documents, “does not benefit from being adjacent to sports fields and courts or Mill Creek. This limits the ability for programming to spill out onto outdoor spaces or change rooms to service field use.”

Site location was at the centre of recent conversation among city councillors after a recent tour of recreation facilities in the Lower Mainland.

After seeing how the Minoru Activity Centre in Richmond was built, some councillors were swayed towards placing the facility closer to the fields and Apple Bowl to get the most out of it.

“I was a bit of a stickler on why rip up fields if you don’t have to,” Coun. Brad Sieben admitted. “Now I’m a bit of a convert on to: you open it and service both the Apple Bowl and the other field that way.”

Coun. Ryan Donn was equally swayed, noting the giant price tag that will come along with the build. He said the project needs to be done right as the community benefits more when the fine details are ironed out.

“I would say, for me, … I was leaning towards the in the parking lot model before I went down. And after I came back, I was learning towards, no, more in the centre, surrounded by green fields,” he said. “The interconnection between the building and the field space and the active space, there is a lot of extra community benefit you can add.”

The estimated construction cost is pegged at $132 million. It will be the most expensive undertaking in the city's 117-year history.