Two Steinbach Schools To Become 'Hotels'

Two schools in Steinbach will soon be converted into temporary living quarters for the 2016 Power Smart Manitoba Summer Games. Randy Hildebrand is co-chair of Athletes' Services for the games. He says it will be quite a job to house, feed and transport 1,000 athletes.

"The girls will be staying at Clearpsring Middle School so there will be 500 athletes there and 500 athletes, boys, at Steinbach Regional Secondary School. Imagine trying to change two schools into a hotel. It's very fascinating and we've been working very hard at making sure that we can get this together. We're going to be putting cots into the classrooms, we need to bring in extra showers because the schools don't have enough showers for our needs. It's going to happen but it's going to take a lot of work and we're really looking forward to it."

Hildebrand says they will keep the athletes from each region together in the living quarters and will place teams in the same room wherever possible. He explains, depending on the size of the room, they can get 14-16 cots in a classroom and will put athletes together with people that they know. There will also be a chaperone in each classroom. He notes special portable showers had to be built.

"These are tractor trailers, like 18 wheelers, that have been constructed into being showers. So two of these tractor trailers will go to Clear Spring and one to the S.R.S.S. These things have been constructed over the winter time, they have been checked out and approved and we're glad that we have them. One trailer has 18 showers and the others each have nine each so we'll end up with 18 at each place."

Hildebrand adds they will start putting up the cots August 2nd and will complete all the finishing touches during that week leading up to the games.

In an upcoming story, we'll hear from Hildebrand about preparing 21,000 meals during the games.