Saskatoon White Buffalo Youth Lodge seeks new building – Saskatoon | 24CA News
The White Buffalo Youth Lodge (WBYL) is now not partnering with the Saskatoon Public School Division and is now looking for a brand new constructing of its personal.
The two entities had been exploring sharing a constructing on the web site of the brand new metropolis centre college, which mixes the Princess Alexandra, King George and Pleasant Hill colleges in a brand new constructing on the Princess Alexandra location in downtown Saskatoon.
But Saskatoon Tribal Chief Mark Arcand instructed Global News it grew to become clear the positioning was not massive sufficient for the brand new college and the drop-in youth recreation centre.
“We want to get into two large gyms because (of) the number of kids that we’re seeing… we want to see more multipurpose rooms, to have more activities,” Arcand mentioned, including the actions might embrace issues like elder companies, training or portray.
The Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC), City of Saskatoon, Central Urban Métis Federation Inc. (CUMFI) and the Saskatchewan Health Authority function the lodge.
Arcand mentioned the lodge acquired round 30,000 visits from youngsters yearly within the years earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic.
He mentioned it’s time to increase and replace the power, which opened in 1999, to proceed to assist youngsters in Saskatoon’s city core.
“When kids don’t have a place to go, maybe they’re wandering the streets and they shouldn’t be. They could be in the gymnasiums playing basketball, playing volleyball for hockey, just doing something positive,” he mentioned.
The metropolis’s planning, growth and group companies committee is scheduled to obtain a report on the matter on Wednesday.
The report estimates the fee for a brand new lodge on the present location between $15 and $20 million. It additionally states the City utilized to a grant program by means of Infrastructure Canada to assist fund building.
The report states the following steps, pending the committee’s after which metropolis council’s approval, are to have the companions develop an settlement for operating the brand new WBYL.
It doesn’t present a timeline.
Arcand mentioned he hoped a brand new lodge could possibly be working by 2025 if not sooner, although he mentioned it is dependent upon what funding is out there.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
