Thursday - March 28, 2024 - How to spend $154 million on four soccer fields

🌧 High 12C

Good morning!

I had friends from out of town stay over at my apartment last night. It was great to see them again and so fun to catch up. But they were in town for a concert that I wasn’t going to and I was staying up to make sure they got back and into the building. However, the trains were delayed so they didn’t get back to Langley until several hours after the concert ended. So, what I’m trying to say is that if this newsletter is full of typos, please know that I am writing it on like three and a half hours of sleep.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

An expensive game of catch up in Langley soccer

Langley is a soccer town.

That’s how Marcel Horn, the executive director of Langley’s main youth soccer organization, Langley United, describes it when he talks about how fast enrolment is growing. Three times more people play soccer in the region than play baseball, field hockey, and lacrosse put together, Horn said.

But Langley doesn’t currently have the field space to be the soccer paradise Horn knows it wants to be. Langley United turned away more than 600 kids last year. 

That may all be about to change—though more fields will come with a nine-figure price tag. And the cost keeps going up.

Langley Township’s politicians seem eager and willing to pay—but first they need to see how many residents are opposed to spending $150 million for a huge new soccer complex. 

• Today, Grace writes about Langley’s plans for a soccer palace.

Related

Need to Know

🐍 Chilliwack conservation officers confiscated an illegal—and gigantic—pet snake [Chilliwack Progress]

🩻 CT scan disruptions are climbing in BC and technicians are raising the alarm—as health authorities downplay the severity of the situation [CTV]

🌷 The Abbotsford Tulip Festival will return this April [Abbotsford News]

🥪 A sandwich shop in Murrayville reopened the day after a car smashed into the front of it [Langley Advance Times]

👨‍🎨 Mission city staff are looking for public input about arts, recreation, culture, and parks facilities [Mission Record]

🏘️ The number of residential building permits in Chilliwack is on a two-year downward trend—but plenty of home-building has happened on nearby First Nations land [Chilliwack Progress]

👉️ Lightning Rock, a sacred Indigenous burial site at the foot of Sumas Mountain, was bought by the province and will be transferred to Semá:th First Nation [Abbotsford News]

♿️ The City of Abbotsford is making a community accessibility plan and asking community members for their input [Abbotsford News]

🗣️ Langley Township’s mayor is planning the town’s first “state of the township” address [Langley Advance Times]

📷️ CURRENT CAM: Congratulations to Sarah, who was the first to correctly identify yesterday’s Current Cam as Brydon Park in Langley.

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THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT GOLDEN PLATES

Voting is now open!

Vote for all your favourite Metro Vancouver restaurants in the 2024 Golden Plates. And make sure to vote in the new categories for best restaurant in Langley, Chilliwack and Abbotsford!

The Agenda

Two of five Othello Tunnels to reopen this summer

The Othello Tunnels are partially reopening this July.

The Coquihalla Canyon Park outside of Hope has been closed since heavy flooding and rain damaged 30 different locations throughout the trails and tunnels during 2021’s atmospheric river disaster.

The first phase of construction and restoration work is set to begin this spring and expected to be finished by this July. The first portion of the work will restore park facilities and fix the trail from the parking lot out to the end of the second of five tunnels. The path will be raised and resurfaced in an effort to keep another flood from wiping it out again.

The other three tunnels and the bridges between them will be part of the second phase of construction work, which the province hopes to have completed by next summer.

The tunnels are Hope’s main tourist attraction, Mayor Victor Smith told the Current last year. They make the highway-side town a major “stop point” for travellers between the Lower Mainland and the rest of the province. When the tunnels are open for visitors, the haunting, mossy stone portals can see up to 170,000 guests over the span of a summer (the tunnels are always closed in the winter).

The tunnels were also closed for several months after an avalanche in 2020, just a year before the floods that would shutter the tunnels for three years.

🗓 Things to do this week/end

🐰 Easter event: Kilby Historic Site hosts an Alice in Wonderland Easter event on March 30 and 31. Details online.

🎵 Concert: Australian musician Daniel Champagne will play at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre on Saturday, March 30. Details online.

🏒 Hockey: The Abbotsford Canucks host the Manitoba Moose at Abbotsford Centre April 2 and 3. Tickets online.

Want even more? Insider members get a comprehensive events listing every Thursday, plus a weekly Saturday round-up edition with behind-the-scenes content. Becoming a member costs less than $2 a week and helps support the ongoing production of The Current’s newsletters and in-depth journalism. Become a member here.

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Catch up

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