Members at the Tournament Capital Centre visited the facilities there nearly 53,000 fewer times in 2018 than they did in 2017.

That’s according to the city’s new recreation master plan.

Director of community and protective services Byron McCorkell says the TCC isn’t meant to compete with private-sector gyms, but rather expose people to fitness.

“Our goal is to expose people to opportunities to be healthy and to be well. Teach them how to do it, give them the opportunities to do it, and then if they choose to go into the private sector for a more intense or a more concerted programming, that’s what we celebrate,” he says.

“If you look at where the TCC started, the concerns were that we were going to compete. What’s actually happened is there’s more gyms in Kamloops today than there were when we built the TCC, so one has to suggest that we are doing of doing a job of exposing people to the need to be moving and to be well, so I think our role now is to continue with that.”

That said, McCorkell says it is hard to compete with low-priced gym memberships from facilities like Planet Fitness, because the TCC facility is not just a gym.