Pemberton's growing Industrial Park is contributing to lower hours of use and a higher number of bookings at the Pemberton and District Community Centre, according to a 2024 fourth-quarter report presented to council.
The centre reported a 32-per-cent decrease in its hours of use in the fourth quarter of 2024, compared to the final quarter of 2023. This came after a peak in renters during the second quarter of 2024 at 2,593 hours. The reported decline in hourly usage is mostly credited to the loss of two long-term user groups: Whistler Gymnastics and Tempest Jiu Jitsu.
The decline in usage didn’t come as a surprise to Christine Burns, Pemberton’s manager of recreation. She told Pique the community centre budgeted for gymnastics and jiu-jitsu to stop renting and move towards the Industrial Park.
“We were working closely with some of those long-term rentals gymnastics and jiu-jitsu,” said Burns. “We were aware that they were looking for a standalone facility, and I had anticipated that by September, when we were doing the budgeting this time last year, that they would be moved along.”
Both businesses moved out of the community centre to open their facilities in the Industrial Park in September 2024.
Kengo Hatanaka, the owner of Tempest Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, previously told Pique he wanted to move the business out of the community centre so the equipment used by him and his students wouldn’t have to be taken out of storage and put away each time they ran a class.
“It was just taking too much time,” said Hatanaka.
The Industrial Park's growth over the last few years has been noted by other community groups. In January, Pemberton & District Chamber of Commerce president Adam Adams wrote to the Village asking for more support on parking options, transportation and snow clearing within the park. In response, council noted the park's expanding presence in the valley.
“It’s a really neat, growing area—the Industrial Park—in so many ways, and it’s exciting to acknowledge that and just see how it’s moving forward," said Councillor Katrina Nightingale during a Jan. 21 council meeting.
Burns said seeing businesses grow big enough to need their own spaces is what the community centre is all about.
“Our goal is to take in these individuals who want to be their own entity and help them grow and prosper and get to the point where they can start looking at having their own standalone facility,” said Burns. “And [to] help make them be potentially more viable on their own, just through them being able to grow their membership.
“The whole point of community recreation is to help build community”
The community centre charges an hourly rate for users based on a Squamish-Lillooet Regional District bylaw, with an option for a discount in the kitchen based on a day's booking. The decrease in hours of usage has resulted in a decrease in revenue for the community centre, but Burns said it won't result in a change in the pricing model for the facility; instead, Burns said the centre has budgeted for that decrease, and that it has opened up new opportunities for community programming. That’s reflected in the fourth-quarter report’s findings that facility bookings are up 43 per cent over the previous year’s final quarter, despite hours of use being down.
“What it means is we have more space, so now all of a sudden, we have more smaller users, users who are just using smaller blocks of time and individual contracts for each of those versus one contract for a bulk of time," said Burns.
She stresses that even with hours of use being down due to gymnastics and jiu-jitsu moving out, service levels are still significantly up compared to pre-COVID levels.
"I do believe everything that is going on right now is just presenting an opportunity for growth in different ways than before," she said. "When you have a long-term rental that's taking up a large space, it prevents some of those ebbs and flows from being feasible, but it presents fiscal stability.
"We're in a nice rhythm right now, so I am excited to see what 2025 brings."
