A grand opening of the Foremost Indoor Arena was held on Thursday.--News Photo Anna Smith
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
The Foremost and District Ag Society invited the community out for the ribbon-cutting on its new Indoor Arena on Thursday, the summit of years of hard work for the community.
“This started as a dream, probably about seven years ago, when we sat around a table and said, ‘What if we could build an indoor arena,'” said Stacey Barrows with the Ag Society. “The next thing we knew, the community was behind us, supporting all of the stuff we were promoting.”
With the help of various sponsors, the society was able to raise more than $900,000 toward the building, which enabled applications for provincial grants to match the funding and make the building itself possible.
“We’re so proud of what we’ve done and how much the community has believed in us,” said Barrows. “We were sitting around the table again a few years ago talking about realizing this building is going to happen, what if we could have a Rodeo Academy in our school? And lo and behold, Prairie Rose got behind us and said, ‘Yes, we can make that happen.'”
The Rodeo Academy out of Foremost School has been going strong for two years now, and the students currently enrolled in it presented the Foremost and District Ag Society with $10,000 at the opening of the arena, to contribute to the purchase of anything that may be still needed to make the space the best it can be.
“We’re excited to have been a part of this building for the Foremost Ag Society,” said MLA Grant Hunter. “We think that these buildings build communities and bring communities together. And we’re excited about as a government supporting things like this through the CFIP and CIP programs we have in the province, not just for Foremost, but for the entire surrounding area which will benefit from this facility.”
It is expected the arena will be able to be used by the public early next week.
