By Breanne Massey

Pioneer Staff

The character of the Columbia Valley can be summed up by its community centre, according to District of Invermere Mayor Gerry Taft.

He has been busy working in conjunction with the Multi-Use Facility Advisory Committee to help build a framework for the recreational activities and events that will be housed within the planned Columbia Valley Community Facility, which will be constructed at the old location of the David Thompson Secondary School, knocked down roughly six months ago.

Mr. Taft used the recent AKBLG AGM (the Association of Kootenay and Boundary Local Governments Annual General Meeting held in Nakusp between April 22nd and 24th) as an opportunity to take stock of another communitys approach to creating multi-use platforms.

I would say, for myself and the people of Invermere, seeing the facilities in Nakusp and the hall that they have were actually the highlight, said Mr. Taft, noting the opportunity to explore the Nakusp facilities were helpful in a sense of weighing up the best approach to crafting a multi-use centre that could become a regional landmark.It gave us some ideas to bounce around with the multi-use centre, which were planning to build.

It was nice to get a visual picture of how high the ceilings were, what it looks and feels like and how many people could fit in the room, he said. It was pretty useful for us.

The advisory committee has been meeting regularly with the architects to help come up with a custom-made project. Mr. Taft said the project is moving away from the conceptual stage and into a fairly detailed design with support from the advisory committee.

Whats planned now is that theyre going to do a little more work with the details and build a 3-D model along with some more drawings, he concluded. Then in the middle of June we have basically penciled in a public open house and the design concept will then be shared with the public. Then, were going to take feedback and make sure that were doing a good job.

The next advisory committee meeting has been scheduled on May 13th between 2 and 4 p.m.