Canada Games Plaza is in for a makeover.

Thanks in part to a $300,000 grant from the Northern Development Initiative Trust (NDIT), Tourism PG will add a market and year-round skating to the plaza.

The work will coincide with Tourism PG’s Visitor Centre moving inside the Civic Centre.

“It was always part of the plan when moving the Visitor’s Centre, we knew there is a great opportunity in Canada Games Plaza to do something for visitors and locals as well,” Colin Carson, the CEO of Tourism PG, told My PG Now.

“We have been pretty aggressively applying for grants to look at how we can activate that space and turn it into a place where people want to spend time.”

Their plan is to build an open-air container market, which will repurpose old sea cans for vendors to use as a space to sell items and services at markets, events, and conferences in the area.

There will also be a year-round outdoor skating rink built using fake ice made of plastic.

Carson explained the ‘ice’ can be “skated on year round, regardless of temperature. It is relatively easily maintained.”

“We are still figuring out all the finer details,” he added. “We want to make downtown as vibrant as we can and drive more people into those areas.”

Tourism PG hopes to have the market, the rink, and the new Visitor’s Centre running by August.

Carson thanked NDIT and the Prince George Community Foundation, who gave them a grant for the Visitor’s Centre earlier in the year, for their support, while adding they are still looking for more grants to add event more to that space.