Great to see a lot of you out at last night's Town Hall.

If you weren't able to make it, you can read the following to bring yourself up to date on the latest positive developments about our 2024 season.

The NCC is continuing to work collaboratively with ONEC in order to ensure we can operate our 2024 rowing programs from the newly renovated River House.

Our interior space is nearly complete and will be primarily used for equipment storage and erging. The River House also provides access to flushing toilets (no more porta-potties!), changerooms with showers, and food services via Bytown Catering + an upper deck with fantastic river views for post workout stretching.

The NCC has offered ONEC the entire lower level of the boathouse. This means we can restore our 3 boat bays (as they were in 2018) and have the option to expand down the road for even more storage. Each boat bay will have ramp access down to the docks, with launching of boats taking place to the south-west of the boathouse.

Structural engineering plans for the lower level decking have been completed and approved. A NCC approved contractor has accepted to do the work and feels they could confidently have the work completed by the end of May (for the east bay) and by the end of May / early June for the central and west bays. The construction cost is not finalized, but initial estimates put the cost comfortably within budget.

So... it is looking like we should be up and running for late May / early June (which is our usual start date for the season) in the newly renovated River House.

This is all fantastic news, there are however several major steps that remain in order for the project to succeed, including: 1) Finalization of the new lease agreement, 2) Securing City of Ottawa building permits, 3) Determining fire safety requirements (hopefully this will be limited to signage and fire extinguishers and not an expensive sprinkler system).

I'm hoping to see everyone back for 2024 - I'm looking forward to a fun and fitness focused Masters Season (with a few drills scattered here and there). Also, get ready for more crew rowing - our new Hudson Quad was among the most popular boats last year... let's make it the most rowed boat of 2024!

Stay tuned for additional updates via e-mail (can post updates here as well). We are going to aim for an update every two weeks over the next several weeks.