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Excitement building around new Y openings

Langford and View Royal locations looking for staff
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Workers were busy finishing the pool area late last year. Now just the finishing touches are going up around the aquatic centre and the rest of the YM-YWCA’s newest location in Langford. The site will be open for members of the public to check out and take a tour of on April 16.

The opening of the new Westhills YM-YWCA Langford Aquatic Centre is drawing nearer.

“The building’s looking great,” said Jennie Edgecombe CEO of the YMCA-YWCA Vancouver Island, formerly known as YM-YWCA of Greater Victoria. “There’s lots of last-minute things going on … It’s the little things like clocks on the wall and garbage cans.”

On May 1, the Langford location will officially open its doors for use with a soft opening, while grand opening celebrations will be held May 14.

While the hope was for both Langford and the Eagle Creek Village location in View Royal to open the same day, construction delays at the latter site have pushed back its projected opening.

“We don’t have an exact date for that; we’re hoping sometime in May,” Edgecombe said. She added Eagle Creek Village has planned a grand opening for the plaza in June that the Y will be a part of.

Starting April 16, the Langford centre will be open daily to the public to check out the facilities, as the final touches are completed. This will allow visitors to “go on a tour and buy a membership if they’d like,” Edgecombe said.

The new facilities on Langford Parkway, across from the Westhills development, will include a gymnasium, health and fitness facilities, a youth centre, various multipurpose spaces, drop-in child care for those using the facilities, as well as a licensed child-care program.

It will also feature an aquatic centre with a lap pool, lazy river, warm water therapy pool and two watersides.

The Langford location’s licensed child-care program will have space for toddlers up to children under five and the Eagle Creek facility has space for infants, toddlers and pre-school aged children.

With the playground equipment arriving last week for the Westhills Y, Edgecombe said, “It’s been a bit like Christmas.”

In the coming weeks, the focus will be to get staff into the new spaces and trained. “We’re doing lots and lots of hiring,” she said, adding with a chuckle, “We need quite a large pool of staff.”

Especially needed are lifeguards and early child care providers.

In total, the two new facilities will create roughly 60 full time and 50 part time new jobs on the West Shore. Any vacancies are posted on the organization’s website at victoriay.com.

While it doesn’t have a pool, the Eagle Creek Village facilities also include a fitness centre and a number of multipurpose spaces.

“We’ve certainly got a lot of interest in both of them,” Edgecombe said.

She added, Y members will be able to use their passes at any of the Y locations.

For more information go to victoriay.com.

katie@goldstreamgazette.com