"These are significant investments, and council wants to ensure future decisions are guided by a clear understanding of long-term priorities, affordability and the many infrastructure needs across our growing county," Rocky View County Reeve Sunny Samra said in late July, explaining why two long-planned Springbank recreation projects were being put on hold.
Two days before this went to print, on Saturday, September 12, nobody at Springbank Park For All Seasons seemed to have gotten the memo. The 54th Annual Old Tyme Fall Fair ran exactly as it has for decades: vendors in the Marquee tent, the Agriculture & Horticulture Bench Show filling the curling rink, kids judged on their Mini Scarecrow entries in the parking lot at 3 p.m. The county's capital plan and the community's calendar are, it turns out, running on two entirely different clocks.
The Bundle Nobody Saw Coming
If you've been half-following the news out of Rocky View County, you might think Springbank's recreation expansion got cancelled. It didn't. What happened is more specific, and more useful to understand if you live here.
Last July, council conditionally approved two projects for Springbank after five years of planning: a $14 million Community Event Centre and an $11.5 million expansion of SPFAS itself, adding an indoor turf field and a walking and running track. By November, the province had chipped in an $850,000 grant through Alberta's Active Communities Initiative to help build a 40,000-square-foot indoor multi-sport complex on the SPFAS site. Momentum looked real.
Then in late July of this year, the county paused both projects, not because Springbank did anything wrong, but because it decided to build a single county-wide recreation strategy before committing more capital anywhere. Springbank's two projects got folded into a review alongside a proposed recreation centre in Langdon and a rink facility in Indus. The county puts the combined cost of all four at roughly $111 million.
| Community | Project | Estimated Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Springbank | Community Event Centre | $14 million |
| Springbank | Indoor court and track expansion at SPFAS | $11.5 million |
| Langdon | Recreation Centre | Part of the $111M total |
| Indus | Rink Facility Expansion | Part of the $111M total |
No completion date has been given for the strategy itself. That's the part worth sitting with. This isn't a Springbank problem the county is fixing on Springbank's timeline. It's a countywide question, and Springbank's answer now depends on decisions being made about three other communities' facilities at the same time.
Ten Years, On Paper
None of this started in 2026. The paper trail behind these two projects goes back further than most residents probably realize, and it explains why the pause reads as a pause and not a reset:
- 2015 – The original Springbank Community Hall was decommissioned, leaving local clubs and user groups without a central gathering space.
- 2022 – Rocky View County purchased 75 acres between Range Road 33, Springbank Road and Huggard Road specifically to support recreation in the area.
- February 2023 – The Recreation Governance Committee approved the South Springbank Facility Business Case, setting the phased plan in motion.
- June and July 2025 – An open house, a public survey, and a council presentation led to conditional approval of both the Community Event Centre and the SPFAS expansion.
- November 2025 – The $850,000 provincial grant landed, earmarked for the 40,000-square-foot multi-sport complex.
- July 2026 – Both projects paused pending the county-wide strategy.
Land acquired, a business case approved, an open house held, a grant already awarded. That's not a project starting from zero. It's a project with most of its groundwork banked, waiting on a policy decision that has nothing to do with whether Springbank's case was strong enough.
What Actually Keeps Running
Here's the distinction that matters if you use the park: the pause applies to capital construction, not to the county's operating budget or to SPFAS programming.
Rocky View County's 2026 budget still includes $1.5 million for a new pedestrian pathway connecting Range Road 33 to Springbank Park For All Seasons. That project wasn't part of the pause. It's moving forward on its own line item, separate from the two big-ticket builds now sitting in review.
Meanwhile, everything SPFAS runs day to day continues without interruption. The Al Fitzsimmons and Don Quinn outdoor diamonds are still booked seasonally through October. The Springbank Curling Club's evening leagues, the Westwinds Ladies day league, and the Springbank Senior Curling group for players 50 and up all run on their normal fall-to-spring schedule once the six curling sheets open in October. The Springbank Soccer Club, the Springbank Playschool for three and four year olds, and the public skate and shinny times at the outdoor rink are unaffected. If your family's routine runs through SPFAS on a Tuesday evening or a Saturday morning, the pause changes nothing about your week.
A Fair That Doesn't Need a Capital Budget
Go back further than the business case, past the land purchase, past even the 2015 decommissioning, and you find the actual origin of this place. In 1968, Jim and Irene Robinson, both born to pioneer families in Springbank, donated the land that became SPFAS. The community raised funds for an arena through a Sportsmans' Dinner, matched by a donation from Mervyn "Red" Dutton, and the Red Dutton Arena opened in 1969. The ice was rough at first, made with locally supplied water that left it soft and salty, so the community raised money again and installed an artificial ice system in 1972. The curling rink, with its six sheets, went in a few years later in 1979, built with leadership and funding from the Springbank Curling Club itself.
None of that required a $111 million county-wide strategy. It required a family willing to give land, a community willing to hold fundraising dinners, and enough decades of showing up that a Fall Fair now in its 54th year still draws vendors, judges a Mini Scarecrow contest, and asks the community to help name a new Olympia ice resurfacer, all without waiting on a single council vote.
That's the part of Springbank that isn't on pause and never has been. The bigger buildings will get resolved on the county's schedule, whatever that turns out to be. The park itself, and the people who built it one donation and one dinner at a time, are already open.
If you're weighing what Springbank life actually looks like day to day, from a Friday morning curling league to a Saturday afternoon at the Fall Fair, that's the kind of detail worth knowing before you ever look at a listing. Bearspaw Real Estate works this corner of Rocky View County closely enough to keep track of both the county's paperwork and the community's calendar. Request a Luxury Tour when you're ready to see what a Springbank acreage actually offers, alongside the park it sits next to.
