KELOWNA – The Kelowna Paddle Centre celebrated a big milestone Saturday. The group held an open house to officially open their new clubhouse. It is a big step up from the set up the group had last year.
“Last year we were using a portion of the property to our south which didn’t have anything except storage containers and racking for our boats,” says director Jeff Fink. “This year now we have change rooms, lockers, showers, a meeting room, a workout room, a kitchen [and] a manager’s office.”
They now have more space and have converted a former home into their clubhouse. Both the land and the building are being leased from the city.
“It means that we can get more people on the water, we can get more people in boats [and] we can share our passion for the water with people that may not have had access before, people who live in condominiums or apartments that don’t have a place to store a boat,” says member Leanne Stanley.
However, the Kelowna Paddle Centre’s location, on publicly owned land, has stirred up controversy in the past. Richard Drinnon spoke out about the issue last September. He believes the land should be used for a public beach.
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Fink says the space is actually getting more public use now than it did in the past.
“At this point it is being used way more by the public than it was before. It was a rental house before, and someone was using it for that, but [now] on any given day you’ve got kids, you’ve got families, you’ve got people from the public, the community and members using this facility,” says Fink.
The Kelowna Paddle Centre says it signed up 30 new members Saturday.
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