MAC will be built on the north-east portion of the property at 6576 Springfield Road in Mount Salem. This location put us in close driving proximity for the very underserviced areas of the community while still only being 20 minutes away from Tillsonburg and St. Thomas.

The Malahide Athletic Centre is the vision of a group of locals who wanted to make sports and recreation more accessible and affordable in our community. In 2020 we began to research ways to accomplish this and we launched a non-profit in Malahide Township with a mission to serve families and individuals in our rural and under-serviced portion of our county.

The Situational Analysis Report done for Malahide Township’s ‘Parks and Recreation Master Plan’ in 2021 found there was a significant shortage of both facilities and opportunities to play sports in our region. Our goal is to work together with local associations and create opportunity to play for everyone through a two-pronged approach.

The first part is to build an indoor facility diverse enough to offer a wide variety of programming that will be accessible, affordable, and inclusive. We are working with Baribeau Construction to create a design that will be cost efficient and financially viable. This will allow us to offer programming that is affordable enough for everyone to enjoy. The building is also very diverse to accommodate most court and turf sports, as well as having space for things like e-sports, after school programming, tutoring, and training.

The second part is to work to eliminate the many barriers, some of which are unique to rural communities, that keep kids, youth, and adults from being able to enjoy the relational, physical, and mental health benefits that come from engaging in sports and recreation. We are working together with our local Jump Start, sports associations, schools, and other community groups to offer the best programming possible and make it accessible and affordable for all age groups.

Like we mentioned above – our aim is to offer as much opportunity as possible. The court side is 100’x180’ and be able to host basketball, volleyball, pickle ball, tennis and most other sports that require a court. To give you an idea of the size – that is enough for 3 high school basketball courts to be used at once.

The turf area is approx. 200’x180’ and because the dome will have a height of over 50’ we are able to play anything from baseball, soccer, football, lacrosse, field hockey, rugby and a list of other sports that people enjoy doing on a turfed area.

The front of house building will have washrooms, change rooms and a studio that can be used for a variety of classes, training and host e-sports events. There is a plan to expand this building to accommodate things like a café.

This project is grassroots, and we are working with local businesses, individuals as well as pursuing grants and foundations to provide funding for the building cost. When the building is operational, we will be able to cover our costs through our programs and rental fees.

We offer many advertising opportunities as well as naming rights – if you are interested in learning more connect with us.

We truly believe that this should remain a community project and as such have buy in from the local community. Beyond our larger donors we want to give families the opportunity to be a part of bringing this project to life. So, we launched #team1000 with the goal of getting one thousand people to commit to donate $1000. We believe that giving people the opportunity to be a part of the team that built this will also have long term effects on the value they take in this vision for generations to come.

The total cost for the project is $5-6 million. To date we have raised over $1.3 million in pledges and donations and have been so blown away at how many people have caught the vision and are willing to help out.

If we can get our funding in place, our hope is to begin construction in the fall of 2023 with completion in early 2024.

Donate – you can donate online at our website or connect with us for more options.

Help us get the word out – share the information with your friends and family and help us reach this goal.

Join our fundraising team – we are always looking for people to help us out.

Join our sport development team – be a part of developing new sports opportunities both for our summer camps and for when the facility opens.

Patrick Stanat
Albert Loewen
Andrew Thiessen
Michael Dyck
Nick Janzen
Paul Leeking
Chris Cox