The 2018 Alberta Summer Games will be hosted by the City and County of Grande Prairie. The sporting events will be held at different venues in the city and in surrounding towns like Sexsmith and Wembley. Bid Committee Chair for the event Lionel Robins says usually the event can bring in up to 2500 people but their vision is for closer to 5000.
“We are trying to make this a destination games where the whole family says instead of you just taking our son, let’s all go. Let’s check out the dinosaur museu, the parks, the lakes, and whatever else.”
Their next steps are to create a committee for planning and pick someone to be the chair which Robins says he hopes is him. There will be about 40 to 50 volunteers needed to plan and about one thousand when it comes to the games in 2018.
“The summer games were here in 2002. I was actually a coach of the Zone 8 Football Team, so I got to experience it myself. So we are going to exceed the expectations from the last one and raise the bar. A bunch of us are going to go to Leduc this summer, where the 2016 games are, and see if we can make it better than what they do this year.”
The bid win for the event was announced by the Premier at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Monday February 29th.