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Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Hey. Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Derek Hudson, host of the Essential Dynamics podcast. Really excited to continue talking about the ideas that we get from Essential Dynamics and the way we look at systems and organizations. And I'm excited to have David Dorward back on the show, talk about the go center, the ups and downs.
Derek:David, welcome back.
David:Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Derek.
Derek:Well, I I really appreciate it, and thanks for that little reminiscence in the last episode about the Butterdome and university games and stuff like that. I feel really privileged to have grown up in Edmonton and have such this legacy of sports in in many ways. So maybe I'm just gonna bridge here for a second because I did have a podcast guest on a while back that we we talked about Edmonton's sports legacy. So, David, what's the g and go center stand for?
David:Well, when my dad used to tell me a story of playing the Edmonton grads in Viking, Alberta when he was 19. The women's basketball team, of course, famous women's basketball team, played 1915 to 1940, coached by Jay Percy Page. Their their record after all the games they played was some... I might get it a little bit wrong, but 502 wins and something like 20 losses.
Derek:Something like that.
David:And so dad played them. They they... Grads used to play at the old Edmonton Gardens in Edmonton. And then what they would do is go out to the communities surrounding Edmonton and play exhibition games out there on a floor put down on sawdust, and dad played against them. So I thought that was pretty neat.
David:And so they became heroes of mine. And when I got a little bit older, sadly, I didn't do it earlier in my life. But when I got older, I approached the grads and and kindly asked them if I could be their friend. And so they invited me to little activities. At that time, there were four or five of them living in Edmonton, still around with us.
David:And so they became my friends. I collected some of their articles. I passed on many things to... Across the the country, actually. And so that's the g, Derek.
David:That's the grads. That's the Evans Right. Famous basketball.
Derek:So you can check back on the podcast episodes I had with Anne Hall, who's who's their his... Historian and biographer. And Yes. What a great legacy that... Like, that's...
Derek:That... They were the biggest show in town in Edmonton for many, many years. And when they played men's teams, they won. Yeah. And they went barnstorming all the way to, like, Chicago, and they beat everybody on the way there, and then they beat everybody on the way back.
David:And Anne's book, grads are playing tonight. I believe his title is a fascinating read of the grads, of course. And so we we were called... The original first name was the Edmonton grads basketball center, named after the grads right from there. And then what happened was along the way...
David:Well, I I held a series of meetings. We didn't talk about that in the first episode, but I held a a series of meetings, which other people might... Your listeners might wanna take this into consideration. I held a series of seven consecutive Saturdays of two hours. And so seven times two hours times seven people max at that meeting.
David:So 50 people essentially for those seven meetings on a Saturday. We had a we had a recorder back in the day who wrote notes, and I kinda moderated. And all I wanted to hear was, here's the puzzle. We need a building for basketball in the city. How do we do this?
David:And I listened to 50 people tell me about it. Actually, it wasn't 50 people. It was 47. The reason it was 47 is because Steve Mandel came three times as a capitalist in the city of Edmonton. He loved it.
David:He loved the concept, and he came and added every single time he came. But I brought in engineers, architects, community, these people. Everybody I could find a sector of what we were gonna need, I brought them in. We... I built friends through that.
David:I built support. I built... I... Community involvement. But most important, I got ideas.
David:And that that was what was really valuable. And one of the ideas was, David, the basketball community is big, but it's not like soccer at that time. And so you need partners. So I kinda put the word out with my group, and I got a callback from Brian Anderson. He said, you know, there's a group in town, and they're called Ortona Gymnastics.
David:Well, he didn't know at the time. Actually, our children went to Ortona Gymnastics when it was down the River Valley. And and so I had a called up a meeting with their board and three members from my board, three from theirs. And I walked in and put up my hand to the to the president of the of the board and said, we're calling our... The the building after the grads.
David:You're Ortona. Why don't we get this going? Let's be the Go Center. And so that's how we got the name. Go Center, g o.
David:Grads Ortona, because they were our first partner.
Derek:And that's how you signed them up?
David:That's how we signed them up. Like, from that day, we we we knew right away. They they had some funds from their own bubble. They were willing to donate that that capital money from when they sold their bubble. And then they also brought forward volunteers.
David:So Ken Fletcher was the guy that... Who I shook hands with and their president. And Ken and I were like brothers in about two seconds, and we... Ken, when I went into politics, took over as president of the Savile Community Sports Center. And if it wasn't for him leading...
David:Continuing to lead the board, then we might not be there. Incidentally, then we had had numerous groups try to join us, like everything from cycling to weightlifting, lots of different groups. And there were probably two or three different kind of volleyball groups, but nobody really was conceptualizing exactly with us. And we knew who we were. And so we had...
David:Finally a phone call from Alberta volleyball, and Terry Gagnon was the executive director. And he said, look, David, I've got $50,000 in operating funds for four years in a row. We've talked away. You're welcome to that. And if we can join you, and we'll bring volunteers as well.
David:And so a lot of great people came out of volleyball to be on our board. And I told Terry, I said, Terry, you know, I'm excited about having you, but I gotta tell you right off the get go. We're not gonna be the gov center. And we're not gonna be the gov center. So you don't get your name in the...
David:It's gonna be go center. He said, no. It's fine.
Derek:So so I just I just wanna, like, catch this here, enjoy this moment. You set out to make a basketball center for Edmonton. And I would think that a lot of people with the kind of drive and focus you have would have tried to not compromise on the basketball center part. You got a great basketball center and brought along volleyball and gymnastics as well. Did you give anything up ultimately if you think about it now by bringing those parties in?
Derek:Yes.
David:Frankly speaking, there would be more time for basketball if volleyball wasn't a partner. But that... To me, we were more holistic than than just basketball. You know, the the... At at the...
David:Again, I I mentioned the principal. The principal is getting youth and families and individuals active in the Edmonton community.
Derek:And so if you're if you're gonna grow up to be five foot two, and you got great balance and stuff like that, basketball might not be your game, but you could be great at gymnastics. And if and if you're six four and two thirty or two hundred, you could be a great basketball player. But if you're one seventy five, maybe you should look at volleyball.
David:There you go.
Derek:So You
David:know, it just... It it was it it was the right combination of individuals who are gonna strengthen us to the point where we knew we could get it done. A lot of people you asked, you know, at what point did you know? It was when we got the 10,000,000 from the province of Alberta, and the city was right there, and we had the university on board, and we just had enough individuals talking about it and and excited about it that I knew it was just a matter of sticking with it for another three and a half years. Although I thought it was gonna be less than that.
Derek:But Thought it was gonna be less. Okay. So we gotta talk
David:get done fast.
Derek:We gotta talk about the the challenges here. So one of the things you you talked about last episode was you had a plan a for federal funding, and you couldn't invoke it because we didn't get the university ad games. And so you had a plan b. Was getting plan b difficult, or did you have another big cracks moment in this last part of putting it together?
David:Well, plan b... I I was doing more barking about plan b with the feds than than the reality of them coming up with the plan b.
Derek:Okay.
David:But I'm glad I did it because I put it on the table early, and therefore, we weren't starting from, you know, bay... Base one. I I I think that no matter what the program had been, I believe that we would've got the money from the feds because we had so much stuff going on at that time. And and and fortunately, it was 2000... It was post 2008, you know, the crisis...
David:Home... Housing crisis in The USA and whatnot. And Canada had fared pretty well, and the Feds decided to come up with a program, which was basically shovel ready projects. We were shovel ready essentially. We had spent six years, seven years of doing our early planning and understood where we were going.
David:And and so we were shovel ready, and that fit that program like a glove. And then we got the extra money from those guys. But but, Derek, the the real real pinch point, if I could move to just a slightly different avenue, was the interaction with the university when it got down to the short strokes of of being in business with them, if you will. And then that was that we we signed an early agreement, more or less, to build the building on their property, but we still needed to work out the dynamics of that. And and so along that pathway, we had a wonderful individual named Don Hickey, who's the vice president of capital projects at the University of Alberta.
David:And and Don was fabulous to work with. He... Very thankful for Don. And he came up with a a a bit of a suggestion to us, which was, if this building has got some university elements in it and it's on our property, we could come up with a program whereby the university could share some of the funding. Given that around 22% ish of the building time is spent on a square footage basis when you look at the hours on the bears and pandas volleyball and gymnastics...
David:Volleyball and basketball teams, so four teams, and they're all sweet and all the stuff that they have over in their suite. And so let's add some components to that, and we could get some funding through the province of Alberta to have another university building in their system. This this was a very... Again, if I could overuse the word, apologies, but it was a very dynamic situation because we couldn't do that unless... And Don explained this, unless the building is a university building.
David:So I literally had to go back to my board, and I remember just a tip for anybody and your listeners, generally speaking, you don't wanna walk into a meeting and let's know how the vote's gonna go. I mean, that's kind of a concept in in business management. So I I had already, you know, talked to several people who were understanding where I was gonna come with this. But nevertheless, I had to apply... To let the board know about it.
David:And so I walked into that board meeting and said, guys, like, for this reason, we we need to give the building to the university. Well, oh, no. No. No. Hold on.
David:Like, that's... What? So I calmly got them cooled down a little bit, and and then... You know, because the the fear was that the university would take over. You know, that we'd lose the community concept of it, and it would be gone.
David:And it would just be turned into something different five years later. Well, now it's been fifteen years, and it's exactly what it was day one. And I'll explain why. So I was able to say to the board, will we ever sell the building? No.
David:How about moving it?
Derek:We're not gonna move it.
David:Oh, we're not gonna move it. So what do we care about? We... And I told the board... Remember putting my fingers up like this.
David:I said, we're gonna have an agreement this thick with the University of Alberta, which will dictate every aspect of that building that's now owned by them. And we'll donate them to the bill to the... We'll donate the building to them because they're a charity, we're a charity, and we can do that under the act. We only care about the operations in the building. That's what we care about.
David:So we essentially created a a a structure that allowed the university to take over the building, to run the building within its budget, with us having three votes out of five on the on the the operational committee that runs the building. And we had a third group over here, which sole purpose is to look at that agreement every single year, because a joint called a joint venture agreement. It's now been in existence for fifteen years, and that separate group led by a member in our community, member of our community, examines that agreement and says, is everybody upholding everything that they were supposed to? The university and the Go Center side, the Savile Center side. And so that's been in place for fifteen years, and the structure is fabulous.
David:Fabulous operational structure, very sustainable building. I think it's only had increases in fees, something like four times, believe. Could be a little correct, maybe five times in fifteen years. So we we created a structure that that really worked. But along the way, we had some challenges, and one was parking.
Derek:Parking.
David:Oh Because the my day that the day the university called me, and finally said, David, we see you got the money from the province. We see they got the money from the city. We hear via the grapevine that you're doing okay on the federal side. Maybe we should talk about whether you could exist over here at the South Campus at the university. So I was already in position to walk into that meeting with the dean of phys ed, Don Hickey, guy by name of John Barry, great guy, couple of other guys, and say, I can't do it.
David:I don't think I can talk my board into moving from John Fry Park over here anymore. Just put too much water under the bridge. Playing hardball. You gotta play hardball now and then. And so they said, well, what do you need?
David:I said, well, free parking in perpetuity for the length of the building as long as it's standing. That's number one. And they said, okay. Number two, you can't slow me down. Number three, you have to help me find other donors and things to finish off the money side.
David:Couple of other smaller things. The parking was number one. And so then you get into creating that document, you know. And you get into the parking section of that document, and meanwhile, you know from your contacts that the parking folks at the university went, you said what to the Savile Center guys? What?
Derek:Was just gonna say you had the right people from the university in the room.
David:I I did, but they took a lot of flack from the parking folks. Can
Derek:tell And
David:so so the university essentially said, look, you're bringing people to an athletic building to be involved in an athletic... So David, we're not gonna put the words in the in the joint venture agreement saying, right next to the building. And I I had to acquiesce on that and and back off a bit and say, we used the wording. And, like, if you if you looked at the joint venture agreement and read it, it says, a a reasonable distance of the building, there'll be free parking. So how far is reasonable?
David:You know, is is it a block and a half, two blocks? Is it three blocks? Probably.
Derek:Depends on athletic building. Depends on the windshield, really.
David:Depends on the windshield. I agree totally. There you go. That was that was a real challenge to come up with that. That that agreement, I don't know how many hours I have...
David:I had in that agreement sitting with people from the University of Alberta, and literally going through every word. I would say three hundred hours. A long... It was a long drawn out process to get it down to the bare bones of what was gonna go on in that building.
Derek:And so would it be fair to say that... I think you're telling me the crux of this whole thing really kind of fell down on that. We have to figure out a way to have a parking policy, which is completely opposite from the rest of the entire University of Alberta.
David:There you go. There's... I don't think there's another one there.
Derek:And when when you started and you were thinking about... You just said, we just need money to build basketball courts. And the the idea that you would be negotiating with a post secondary institution for three hundred hours to solve this minor detail, which was a deal killer, And it and it would have been a deal killer. Right? Like like, if you if you think about a family going, taking their kids, going to sports for for them to play, and you put university parking rates on it, what's gonna happen?
David:Oh, for us, it was... You know, that was... Well, that's why they made it number one there. I mean, that that was... It was number one because that's an unknown then.
David:Right? I mean, it could go up to any price. The universities still have on the books a a potential of building sheets of ice behind the Savile Center to the West Side, and and having a a parkade there, which then people could run the old way Staples used to be where if you park in that parkade and then walk into the Savile Center, then you can get your ticket punched, and you'd still be okay to park there for nothing. Yep. So, yeah, it was very important to keep the cost down.
David:We... Because it fit fit into what you said previously, which is getting kids that don't have opportunity there that that might be able to scrounge together a pair of running shoes, but need help with any other ancillary costs to to look after after their needs.
Derek:Well, let me let me bridge over to that for a second. So at the Savile Center or in your life as a coach, your refereeing and stuff like that, can you just think of a few stories where basketball really did make that difference in a kid's life? Or any other sport for that matter?
David:No. No. I I'm happy with Yeah. Basketball. So you're talking about Tefri.
David:Tefri came from an African country with his family, three daughters and and himself and mom and dad. And Spencer, my youngest son, who was our best player in the family, not to disparage the other kids, but he was he was a very gifted athlete. Spencer came home to me to to us, Janice and I, on probably... Oh, I would say grade three, I think it was. And he said to me, dad, I'm coaching basketball at recess.
David:I said, what? That's awesome. Now Spencer was the youngest son, so he had come in diapers literally to the other kid's basketball practice. Our kids are three years apart. So he saw basketball from the start.
David:And and I said, what? And he said, yeah. He says, I'm teaching Teferi and others. So Teferi, who's Teferi? So then when Spencer got to be...
David:So that would have been probably around seven years of age. So when Spencer was eight and he started playing, well, he asked Teferi to come. So Teferi came. And Teferi didn't have the... Didn't always have the ability to be able to get rights to the game.
David:We found rights. Other kids in our team other than Tefry, they needed to have their fees paid. We assisted and supported and helped as a community get those kind of things done. It was always that kind of attitude. So now, Jeffrey today is electrician.
David:His his home got his home had a trouble because his dad was running a propane vehicle, which was in the garage, and tragically, they had a fire. Nobody got injured, but they lost their house in our neighborhood. There was lots of challenges and difficulties coming to a new country with language and jobs and whatnot. And Jeffrey is a successful young man, an outstanding, wonderful, wonderful person. And some of that, not all of it, obviously, his choices to make in his life.
David:But his anchor, his iron rod was holding on to the basketball that he had with his players... With his other friends and and eventually high school and played high school basketball and whatnot. So there's numerous numerous stories, I'm sure.
Derek:What's your best experience maybe looking back with the whole project?
David:Oh, boy. Probably, I would say the women's basketball team, finding a way to fund being... Having the Savile Center as the national training headquarters in the summer for about, I think, five, six, seven years. Paul Serve was able to arrange that through his work at Basketball Alberta and him... Paul getting funding with the city and and other funders.
David:It isn't today. They've they've different directions, different different, I guess, probably policies, and and things and funding issues were always a concern in sport. But that was a real prideful kind of a thing. The the sitting volleyball team at times has had international competitions. We've had Olympic games, entry game.
David:We've had competitions of women's basketball at the Savile Centre, which are have got to do with, you know, entry into the Olympics and qualifying tournaments and those kind of things, which are which are very gratifying. It's gratifying just to walk in the building and just see the the activity that you said before in the in the last chat chat we had, and and the energy that you feel when you're when you're in there. And we're... We achieved, I think everything we wanted to along the lines of of people having it as a a fulsome wholesome place to stay. There'll be a pile of balls and players and somebody reading a book and sitting there, there's still room to meander around.
David:And and they're they're waiting for the next game, or they're just hanging out, and their parents know they're in a safe, wonderful place. Derek, the only thing that I have problems with in expressing this is that we we somehow have to find a way to have more of these in more places, not only in Edmonton. I'm helping just assisting a group softly in Ottawa that's trying to get a Savile Center style building built in Ottawa and other places. And I've always thought philosophically that knowledge is free. I mean, that's kind of a philosophy of my life.
David:Not that we don't need to earn a living, but to disseminate knowledge is is free. It doesn't cost me anything. In fact, it probably strengthens my knowledge and understanding of what I'm giving away. And so I've always been a proponent of sharing all the knowledge I can to assist anybody that wants to get involved in a building of this type for any purpose. Doesn't matter what the purpose is.
Derek:Well, David, thank you for that offer. We're gonna share your contact on LinkedIn in our show notes. And I just wanna make it clear. We... You heard it here.
Derek:David said, I will help you with your project because I know how... I... I've learned some things along the way. And, David, I really appreciate you sharing the stories. I'm just thrilled to have kinda walked this journey with you.
Derek:I watched it from afar. And and I have to say that if you're anywhere near Edmonton, there's a... We have lots of cool things in Edmonton. I love the River Valley. We've got professional sports.
Derek:We've got culture. We've got the fringe, all kinds of stuff. But if you wanna feel energy, just go into the Savile on a Saturday morning. Yeah. And you see...
Derek:You'll see the future, and it's pretty good.
David:Yeah.
Derek:Alright. Thank you very much, David. Brian Griffiths, thanks for making us sound so so good, almost as good as we look. For for everyone, think about David's experience here in doing something which seemed insurmountable, and he pulled it off benefiting the lives of many, many people. So let's go with those ideas and for sure consider your quest.