On 70 Avenue, recently demolished houses are the first sign of site preparation work on the future Newton Community Centre, a $310.6-million, 190,000-square-foot complex to be built south of the neighbourhood's longstanding arena.
The coming "hub for recreation and culture" will include a 50-metre swimming pool, gymnasiums, fitness centre, arts spaces and library three times larger than the existing facility nearby.
Priciest of Surrey's current capital projects, Newton's new community centre is in the preliminary planning phase, with design-build team selection expected in mid-2025 and construction due to conclude by 2029. No project renderings have been made public.
"That land there has been vacant for a long time, many decades," noted Philip Aguirre, executive director of Newton Business Improvement Association (BIA).
"With the city having a long-term plan like this, it's just about time that we got going on revitalizing the Newton Town Centre. I think it's going to be a great catalyst to get even more investment in Newton."
On the site stands The PLOT community garden, which includes a medicine wheel and hosts ceremonies celebrating the changing of seasons.
The original location for the community centre was on King George Boulevard, south of 70A Avenue, where a “groundbreaking” event was held in September 2022, on the former Rona store site. Those plans were scrapped with changes on Surrey council, however, and the current site, at 71 Avenue and 136B Street, was revealed a year ago.
The former site is now being used for staging of materials for the 132 Street road-widening project, a city hall rep says. It's not immediately clear what will be built on the vacant land, although Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke has suggested it might be a good place for B.C.'s new South Asian Heritages Museum.
Newton Community Centre “represents a significant milestone” for Surrey as “the largest capital project ever undertaken in terms of both funding and scope,” Locke stated after the 2024 Operating and Capital Budget was approved.
One question is, with a new community centre to be built nearby, what happens to Newton Recreation Centre, home to Surrey's only wave pool?
"The city invested roughly $25 million in refurbishing the wave pool just a few years ago," Aguirre said. "I suspect that in the long term, the City of Surrey will be looking for creative ways to revitalize the wave pool. That could be selling it off, that could be amalgamating it into the senior centre and whatnot, but I suspect they might look at creative solutions such as selling it to a third party."
The future of the old hockey arena is also in question, Aguirre added.
"It's dated and needs to be refurbished, replaced, relocated, maybe," he said. "Many moons ago the Newton BIA, while advocating for the revitalization of the town centre, we always thought that a spectator arena would have been a great addition to the community, and we still hold that.
"You know, Newton is in the centre of the city, and Surrey doesn't have a space to hold a lot of the functions that a large city does. There's always lots of talk about City Centre having that facility, but again, land is at a premium and the city does own quite a good footprint of land in the Newton Town Centre for a large complex like that."
