The Town of Sundre’s roughly $10,000 contribution to the new gazebo at Greenwood Campground represents a small portion of the overall cost that is being borne largely by local businesses and volunteers, the municipality’s administrator said.
“It’s a community-based initiative that will come back to the community,” Linda Nelson, Sundre’s chief administrator officer, said last week.
“A lot of people are putting their heart and soul into it,” she said.
“Every step of the way, a little surprise is added to it.”
Until the local businesses and contractors who have contributed supplies and labour have completed the work, the overall cost will remain uncertain but is expected to easily eclipse the sum budgeted by the municipality last year, she said.
“Taxes are not going up because of the gazebo,” she said, adding funds had already been allocated in 2018 and were merely carried over.
“It’s a gift to the community.”
Some residents have recently expressed concerns in social media discussions about the cost, while others wondered why the design previously selected by the public following a survey last fall had been sidelined in favour of a more traditional eight-sided structure.
The concept designs created for the project, which resembled less of a gazebo and more of a pavilion, cost less than $3,000, said Nelson, adding the architectural artist behind the winning design had another location in mind.
“It didn’t fit what we were trying to accomplish.”
While the design that was selected from the small survey response was “beautiful,” the cost would have been far more substantial, somewhere to the tune of $100,000 or more, she said.
“The cost would have been massive.”
But the municipality now owns those drawings and in the future could potentially still build the structure selected by the public in the survey at another location, she said.
The drive for the gazebo under construction at Greenwood Campground initially started as a community-based initiative rather than a town-administered project, she said.
When the project’s original lead, Moe Fahey, for a time anticipated relocating out of province, the municipality attempted to pursue the plan, but neglected to include in the survey her original design, said Nelson.
“I’m pretty confident that the original design would have been the winning one,” she said.
