Sherwood Park residents campaigning against non-profit's new youth facility

BGC Strathcona County is looking to expand and build a new state-of-the-art facility in Sherwood Park, but some who live near the proposed site are against the idea. 

The non-profit, formerly known as Boys and Girls Club, caters to about 2,000 children and youth each year with their after-school programs, drop-in programs, summer camps, art and nature programs. 

The organization still has 800 kids on its wait-list. To help reduce that number and centralize, the group has chosen a wooded site beside Brentwood Elementary and proposes to build a two-storey, net-zero building with a geothermal system and solar panels. 

But some residents are pushing back. 

"I don't want it in my front yard," said Jessica Mcneal, who lives near the proposed site.  She is one of the more than 600 local residents who signed a petition against the project, earlier this year. 

Traffic is already a problem most school mornings, said Mcneal and she worries this new facility will make it much worse.

"I feel like we're constantly just getting crushed out of our neighbourhood with this whole program going through." 

Some residents have also raised safety concerns. 

"I've seen kids come literally to the point where they bounce off the car because they're running across as the car is coming down the road," said local resident Perry Gould, who also owns several properties in the neighbourhood. 

"There's just no availability for added traffic."

 A GoFundMe has raised more than $7,000 in donations from across Canada to hire a lawyer to fight the project.

"My kids have been in that program. I love it. I love the staff there," said Mcneal. "It's absolutely astronomical, what they do for people in the community." If the project goes forward, both Mcneal and Gould said they would move. 

But, not all residents in Sherwood Park oppose the project. 

Multiple parents voiced support for the new build at a 13-hour council meeting in February, saying the club's programing had been invaluable to their children and would like to see it expanded.