Although it’s a given the Westlock and District Agricultural Society’s horse track will have to move, the timeline remains very much in flux.
“The town has given us a deadline,” said Ag Society secretary Cheyanne Erickson. “They would like to have us vacate the old track as of December 2014.”
However, she said the society has formally requested a three-year extension until the end of 2017 in order to do more fundraising.
At the May 27 town council meeting, Erickson asked for an extension, but doesn’t expect town councillors to make their decision for a few days.
The society has set a fundraising goal of around $700,000 to build a new track. This cost includes new bleachers, which Erickson said are expected to cost about $250,000 all by themselves.
Unfortunately, the society’s fundraising activities have so far come up short of that goal — it’s only managed to collect about $30,000.
Fortunately, Erickson said the society is able to access numerous grants to help cover the cost of the new track, but those grants have some strings attached.
The society can apply for those grants, but not until the exact timeline for the new track has been determined and the town and county have finalized their contributions to the project.
She explained the municipalities need to ante up their contributions before the grants can be applied for because the grants will match municipal contributions.
“I have all the grant forms sitting here, but we can’t do much until we know for sure when we’re going to be working,” Erickson said.
While Alberta Oldtimers Motocross Association president Vern Hardie said the Westlock motocross track will be demolished to make room for the Ag Society’s track, Erickson left the door open for the two to coexist.
As it stands, the ag society track is slated to be placed south of the Ag Barn, just north of where the motocross track currently sits.
However, she said the plan is to build a larger horse track than the one that is currently located by the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre, which would make having two tracks on the same site a tight fit.
“If we tried to squeeze it in there, we could try to salvage the Pembina Dirt Busters’ track back there, but it would make everything really crowded,” Erickson said.
Although the plan is to keep the track oriented in a generally east-west direction south of the ag barn, Erickson said nothing has been finalized.
“Nothing’s set in stone at the moment because we don’t even have a survey done yet.”
Once the survey has been done, she said the society will be able to decide where its track will end up, and whether the motocross track can continue to exist.
