The Kinsmen Fieldhouse will be closed starting Monday for more than a year so that its long-awaited rehabilitation can be completed. Among the biggest upgrades is the installation of an artificial turf on the fieldhouse’s centre courts. It will be the fieldhouse’s third surface since it was built in 1968. “We’ve certainly lost a lot of the field sport groups that have trained here over the years at Kinsmen, who have gone to some of the other facilities in the city, both public and private, who have put artificial turf surfaces in,” said Brad Badger, the city’s director of physical activity and sports centres. “It’s really overdue. There’s some mechanical and system work that needs to take place, but there’s also some really front-facing amenities that are long over due, primarily our surface.” The field house is also getting a five-lane synthetic competitive lower running track, a larger functional training centre, new flooring for that space as well as Courts 5-8, a second batting cage, and windows. “Essentially the walls and the base (are) not changing. It’s really what’s within that is going to change,” Badger told CTV News Edmonton. The facility is expected to reopen in the fall of 2027. Some of the changes will have been in the works for 15 years by that point, and delayed due to a lack of available funding. The city is working with other sports partners in the city to help accommodate groups who use the fieldhouse until it reopens. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall
