About Downtown Soccer Toronto

Withrow Park Looking Pretty Rough? Here's what we have been doing about it!

Because DST plays on Sundays throughout the summer, alternative fields are not available within city limits. Sundays in the summer are prime permitting times for fields in the city. We are lucky to have Withrow Park, and it has became evident that we should concentrate on partnering with the City to get Withrow repaired after an exhaustive search for alternatives.

In October, 2010, we approached Paula Fletcher's office, City Councilor for the ward that Withrow Park is in, asking what can be done to improve the soccer pitch to make it safer. In December, 2010, we met with the City Partnership office to discuss what alternatives there are to repairing the field. The message was loud and clear: there is no money for repairs at the city level. However, further discussions with Parks Department uncovered a possible $5,000 towards improvements.

We entered talks with the Head of the Parks Department, the Area Supervisor, and Partnership Office to discuss raising funds to help reach the goal of $60,000 to re-sod the soccer pitch at Withrow Park. The Parks Area Supervisor increased their commitment to $20,000 towards improvements.

We spoke with the contractor doing the repairs to discuss a lower price or a change in the amount of work to be done. The price was lowered from $60,000 to $30,000; however, this was for levelling and re-sodding, without "crowning" for drainage. We now felt we had a goal of approx. $30,000.

We then approached other leagues using Withrow Park. Pink Turf stepped up and commited to raise money with a goal of $5,000. DST and perhaps Pink Turf would donate $5,000 each and with the commitment of $20,000 from the city, we had close to the $30,000.

The city then informed us that the price had been moved back up to $60,000, citing that the field would have to be done to City specifications (this mainly had to do with drainage concerns). We went in search of donations to raise the extra $30,000. We have approached and, in some cases, formally applied for grants from BMO, Trillium Foundation, Manulife, Maple Leaf Sports, and the Jay's Care Foundation.

There was a meeting with "Friends of Withrow Park" in May. The Area Parks Supervisor told the attendees that funds were slated to re-sod the soccer pitch on September 15th, 2011, and that alternate fields will be found for the soccer leagues while the work was being done. It was also suggested that the funds may all come from the city, and contributions may not be needed. The DST executive has set aside $5,000 as a possible contribution to this effort.

To make a long story short, hopefully the work will be done in September, and next year's DST season will be on a great field!