Home → Services → Parks, Recreation & Culture → Greater Vernon → Community Sports Facility

Greater Vernon Athletics Park

Greater Vernon residents went to referendum on April 6, 2013 to vote on whether they support long-term borrowing to construct a community sports facility, which will include track and field facilities as well as sports fields.

Located next to Highway 97 and College Way, adjacent to the parking lot for the Okanagan College Vernon campus, the track and artificial turf field of the Greater Vernon Athletics Park will be opening up to the general public at the soft opening, to take place on Friday, August 28, 2015, from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm.  After this date, those areas will be open from dawn until dusk, with the remainder of the park, including the building and the ancillary athletics facilities, to be open in time for the Grand Opening.  The natural turf field will not be available for use until Spring of 2016.

The Grand Opening of the facility will be Saturday September 26, 2015, and planning for the event is now underway. Organizers of the event invite all interested sport, recreation, non-profit, music, dance, or cheer squads that are interested in being part of the day’s festivities to submit an application for space by September 1, 2015.  There is no fee to participate.  Application forms for the event are available online at: http://bit.ly/athleticspark.

Facility Details

Booking and Regulation Information

For reservations contact Recreation Services call 250-545-6035.
For the current Parks Regulation Bylaw visit www.rdno.ca or call the City of Vernon at 250-550-3505 for information on bylaw compliance.

Background

The objectives of the project are to:

• address the lack of a regulation sized (synthetic) track and athletics facility in Greater Vernon;
• address the need for more sports fields and programming time;
• and support the Polson Park Redevelopment Plan

• Click here to see the concept plan

The need for a facility like the one proposed has been identified within the ten-year Greater Vernon Parks, Recreation and Culture Master Plan:

• “Upgrade or develop two to six additional fields in parks or at schools over the next ten years” (depending on artificial turf or not) (pg v.)
• “There are several important trends occurring in soccer.  One is a move toward artificial turf, which can sustain much higher levels of play year-round and many BC communities now have or are developing such fields” (pg 27)
• “If an artificial turf field is not developed, [Greater Vernon needs to] upgrade or develop six additional fields in the next ten years.” (pg 20)

Please direct inquiries to:

Phone:  250-550-3691
E-mail:  [email protected]