Town of East Gwillimbury breaks ground on new $100M recreation complex

The Health and Active Living Plaza is scheduled to be open to the public in 2025

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 26, 2022
Simon Martin

The Town of East Gwillimbury officially broke ground on the Health and Active Living Plaza earlier this month. Once complete, the 85,000-square-foot Health and Active Living Plaza will offer the community the town’s first aquatics centre, a new library, recreational programs and activities and health services. Facility construction is scheduled to take place over the next 26 months and the facility is anticipated to open in 2025.

“This project has been a council priority for many years and I applaud staff and community partners for reaching this important milestone,” Mayor Virginia Hackson said. “The cost to build the facility is $76,537,000, which will be funded entirely through development charges and at no cost to the taxpayer.”

The facility site is off the west side of Leslie Street in Queensville.

On September 7, 2022, East Gwillimbury Council approved the construction tender to build the facility. The contract was awarded to Aquicon Construction Co. Ltd. While the tender was upwards of $76.5 million, that doesn’t include the more than $10 million the town has already spent getting the project ready for tender. When all is complete, after the town tenders an accompanying park, the total cost of the project could be upwards of $110 million.

The Health and Active Living Project wasn’t supposed to be this expensive when council first started talking about the project several years ago. In 2020, the estimated cost was $50 million. Last year, council was told that cost had ballooned to $67 million. Now the tender for the facility is $77 million.

Town staff said the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts upon the construction industry, resulting in unprecedented prices. Supply chain issues, rising commodity prices, labour shortages and inflation have created an environment where construction prices have increased 20 to 40 per cent over the last two years.