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Edmonton city council will decide next week whether to contribute $8 million to help build a $30-million indoor cycling track and recreation centre on the city's south side.

It would replace the existing Argyll Velodrome, built for the 1978 Commonwealth Games, with a covered facility that would house the new cycling track and a practice field for soccer and rugby, as well as a fitness centre.

Supporters of the indoor velodrome project at a meeting of city council's community services committee Monday.
(CBC)

"We would like to run the programs 365 days a year, as compared to 17 weeks," David Emburey, with the Argyll Velodrome Association, said Tuesday of the plan.

Emburey said the group would raise the rest of the $30-million cost itself through leases and other fundraising.

The plan has won the support of many in the cycling community, who say it would compliment the existing bike trail network through the River Valley, which includes the site of the Argyll Velodrome.

"Because it's at the end of Mill Creek Ravine, it allows people to access the facility without having to use surface streets. You can take the bike path which will allow youth to get there in a safe way," Alex Stieda, a former professional racing cyclist, told a city council committee Monday.

But some people who live nearby worry the project will have too much of an impact on the parkland in the area.

"[This] is one of the few areas in the city where you can take your family and enjoy playing sports, with trees around you, birds, nature all around, and its wide-open vistas," neighbour Robert Priest told the committee. 

"We're now going to pave over a good portion of it for the parking and then we are going to cover the rest over and isolate it with indoor sports," Priest added.

Supporters of the project say the new recreation centre will be built on the existing footprint of the current velodrome and will have no further impact on the site in Mill Creek Ravine.

Edmonton city council is scheduled to debate the project at its meeting on April 16.

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