NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT The Veiner Centre in Medicine Hat has been closed to members and the general public since mid-March, though Mayor Ted Clugston has said an announcement about re-opening the facility that stages seniors programming could be coming this week.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
The Veiner Centre was the last of the city’s public facilities to reopen from early pandemic restrictions and will be the first, and perhaps one of the only, to close again this week under new measures.
City officials announced the home of municipal seniors’ programming will not be open to the public on Friday as new provincial restrictions for social gatherings take effect.
Changes to the performance schedule at the Esplanade are also expected.
Others aimed at reducing capacity at recreation and fitness facilities may require changes to programming, but most likely won’t require any complete shut downs, said Merrick Brown, the city’s director of emergency management.
“We’re identifying the high-level impacts, and there are quite a few restrictions, and there will be impacts,” he told the News, adding that a more complete statement of changes would likely be made public on Friday.
That day, Nov. 27, is when a raft of measures announced this week by Premier Jason Kenney take effect.
They limit capacity at things like fitness classes, pools and other rec activities at one-quarter typical capacity, though, noted Brown, facilities weren’t yet back to full capacity since they reopened in the summer.
“We don’t see any drastic changes,” said Brown.
All city rec and cultural facilities closed in late March when the province imposed a restriction on groups of 10 or more gathering indoors.
The Family Leisure Centre and Esplanade reopened to the public in June, as did the Medicine Hat Public Library, which operates independent of the city.
Other indoor rec facilities came back online over the summer or early fall, in case of arenas, but the Crestwood Rec Centre and Moose Rec Centre arena, remained closed.
The Veiner Centre, which does host fitness classes, has the main function as a social gathering place, said Brown, and those sorts of gatherings are now barred by the provincial order. Outdoors the limit is 10 people.
The centre only reopened this month as city top officials said they were exercising extreme caution considering that seniors are an at risk group, and the facility also site to Meals on Wheels operations, which is considered a critical community support program.
“We have appreciated the opportunity to welcome seniors into the Veiner Centre over the last number of weeks,” said Aaron Nelson the manager of community connections and support.
“In light of the enhanced public health measures, we will pivot our activity toward engaging with our members through social media, as well as out existing telephone campaign.”
The Esplanade theatre schedule shows two performance dates in the next three weeks, including a comedy tour on Dec. 3 and singer-songwriter John Wort Hamman of Dec. 5.
