The Braefoot Community Association (BCA) will soon have to find another home after the District of Saanich said it wouldn’t be renewing the clubhouse lease.
“To get the call that we were actually being evicted and the lease was not being renewed was a complete surprise and shock,” said chair of the association, Sean Nacey.
The building is owned by the District of Saanich and Nacey was all set to renew the 5-year lease at the end of 2020, when he heard the municipality was kicking them out by Dec. 31, with only a couple of weeks notice.
The two parties have since come to a temporary understanding, with the BCA on a month-to-month rental agreement that will finish at the end of April.
The BCA has held the lease to the building for 34 years, and they were the ones to build it from the ground up.
“The building itself was built and paid for by community members in the mid-80s,” said Nacey. “At that time the building was gifted back to Saanich and at that time the understanding was that the Braefoot Community Association would be able to operate its programs there.”
Although this might have been the initial understanding, it doesn’t seem to be legally binding.
“The Braefoot Park building is a Saanich-owned building on parkland and the lease does not speak to an ongoing commitment,” said Megan Catalano, communications manager for the municipality.
Saanich was already in charge of maintaining the soccer pitches, lacrosse box and baseball fields, but now it says it’s in dire need of more space to run more diverse programs.
Catalano told CHEK News that Saanich “has a critical and immediate need to use the Braefoot Park building to meet short and longer-term initiatives.”
The district plans to create programs for “highly diverse populations,” including children, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2+ members and low-income families.
As for the current programs and activities that already run in the building, the district says it will consider continuing them, but there are no guarantees.
Vanessa Wood, a local parent who has a child in the after school program at the BCA, says she depends on the after school childcare while she’s at work.
“I felt devastated, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it now, we rely on them for after school care,” said Wood. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh I have to find somewhere else for him, but finding this position was hard enough. With COVID, that makes everything so much harder. I don’t want to expose our parents to my kids who are in contact with so many people.”
She says the BCA is one out of only two options for after school care in the area and doesn’t know what she’s going to do in May when the program shuts down.
The BCA has started a petition to reverse the decision, hoping for a change of heart that will allow them to stay.
Rebecca Lawrence
