The planning for the 2018 Alberta Summer Games is underway. The event will be held in both the city and the county and Chair Lionel Robbins says their first step in the process was to the hold a retreat.
“There is 15 different directors on the board for such things as ceremony and protocol…food. We locked them away for 36 hours in a hotel conference centre and mapped out our plans for the games.”
The budget was also a topic during the retreat and Robbins says they do plan to stay within the same one that they presented for the bid. He says it is around $1.8 million. The city pitched in another $100,000 to the event which doubled their contribution to $200,000. The county was approached earlier in the month for an additional $100,000 but were turned down. Robbins says the county will be contribute gift-in-kind in place of the money.
The group has picked out possible venues for the opening and closing ceremonies as well. Robbins says they are looking at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum for the opening and Revolution Place for the closing ceremonies.
“As a joint bid, we want to recognize that both hosts want to have interaction with the games…If the next best place is almost as good and is in the city or county. That is impacting our decisions.”
He highlighted some of the facilities in the area as being potential for some of the events to be held such as Crosslink County Sportsplex, Eastlink Centre, and CKC area near the Eastlink.
The chair is expecting to need around 3,000 volunteers to put on the games.
“Once we are done with the 200 volunteers like the directors and their portfolio chairs, there is a very specific position we have to hire which is the Games Ambassador. We are going to be hiring them sooner rather than later. They are the ones that walk around like the people in the Calgary airport in the white hat. They are the people that know everything and know where everything is.”
There is volunteer rallies in the works for large groups of people who want to get involved. Robbins says they are looking for those people to connect over Facebook.
The board of directors will meet once a month up until the games which will be held in July 2018.