The mayor of Sun Peaks says he’s still hopeful the state-of-the-art Sun Peaks Centre will have ice ready by Christmas time.

Al Raine says piling work needed for the roof over the ice sheet has pushed construction back by about a month, but he hopes that time can be made up.

“We’re doing quite well on the meeting room side, and the fitness side. The roof is going on as we speak, the plywood sheeting on the roofs. The only we really have is with the skating rink side. We’re putting a roof over the skating rink, and we’ve had issues with the footings and foundations there,” he says.

“The natural soils are not good enough to really support the roof, so we’ve had to put in piles, and they’ve used screw piles. And there’s been a few hiccups on that. But we just I think got all of the problems solved now, and the concrete should start to go in within the next couple weeks. But that’s put us about a month behind for the roof of the rink.”

Raine says all the funding has now also been secured for the facility worth nearly $9 million. He told NL News in the spring the municipality was scrambling for the last several-hundred-thousand-dollars, and he says that has now been sorted out.

“We did have some overruns on our budget dealing with these piles, and we’ve seen received some help from TNRD Area P (Mel) Rothenburger, has recommended – and that was approved by the TNRD board – that we grant $300,000 dollars to the project. So that’s really helped us a lot.”

The project was given a green light after Sun Peaks received $6 million in federal gas tax funds last year, and last month the regional district approved a $2-million-dollar loan for the facility. Raine says the municipality also is using several hundred thousand dollars in funds from its Resort Municipality Initiative fund.