Some bad news and good news for renovations at the Moncrief Construction Sports Center.

Work to replace the dry pad won’t be going ahead this summer due to time.

General manager of Recreation Culture Andrew Smith say the good news is they will be able to use the Thistle Rink for unstructured activities over the next couple of months.

“At a high level, essentially we’re putting everything on the dry pad,” Smith told city council recently.

“There’s typical sports such as badminton, pickle ball, we’ve got ping pong, we’ve got cornhole.  There’s something for everyone.  We’ve got jumbo Janga. This is an awesome opportunity.  There’s even ball hockey that’s happening.”

Smith says they want to use the dry pad for sports and games, that they normally wouldn’t have.

“This is a drop in.  It’s non-structured.  It’s great for the youth who need that sort of equity type of programming.”

Smith they decided to put off replacing the dry pad because they were worried the work wouldn’t be done in time to install ice for the fall.