The eyes of the curling world will turn to Moose Jaw once again in 16 months when the Scotties Tournament of Hearts return to the city.

Curling Canada made the announcement on Thursday that the 2020 edition of the national women’s curling championship will be coming to the Friendly City and Mosaic Place from Feb. 14-23, 2020.

"You go where you know it’s going to work," said Resby Coutts, Past Chair of Curling Canada’s Board of Governors. "More and more, we’re focusing on the business model and a proven track record, a community that’s willing to try again and build on previous success, it’s just the right thing to do."

Moose Jaw previously hosted Canada’s top female curling teams for the Scotties in 2015. Mosaic Place has also hosted the 2012 Canada Cup of Curling since opening in 2011.

The Canada Cup set attendance records for that event and the success continued three years later with the Scotties.

The Organizing Committee is focused on putting together another first-class event for the city and province.

"How do you top something that drew 70,000 fans in 10 days? It’s tough to do, but we’re going to give it a shot," said Kevin Dedelley, Co-Chair of the 2020 Scotties Organizing committee.

"We’re going to have a great team of volunteers here, we’ve touched base with a lot of them already and they’re quite willing. This is going to be great for our city."

About 400 volunteers will be needed to run the 10-day event, which will bring curlers and fans from across Canada to Moose Jaw.

Starting with the 2018 Brier, Saskatchewan will be home to three curling national championships, as well as 2018 Canada Cup in Estevan in December.

"Moose Jaw did everything right [in 2015], they had a memorable facility, great support from the community and sponsors and they really put on a show for our athletes, for our fans, and they had a plan to capture those new curlers back in," said Ashley Howard, Executive Director of CurlSask.

Kevin Dedelley, Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee, speaks during Thursday's Scotties announcement at Mosaic Place. (Photo: Marc Smith)

One area of issue during the 2015 Scotties was parking around Mosaic Place in downtown Moose Jaw. City Councillor Dawn Luhning said that’s something that they’ve already discussed.

"Now that we’ve got the announcement, [parking] is something that we’ll jump on and I’ll try to get talking about how we can make it better and create some better parking areas, so we’ll work on that kind of stuff right away," said Luhning.

The 2015 edition of the event brought an economic impact of over $6-million to Moose Jaw and the same, if not more, can be expected this time around.

Dedelley said the organizing committee is ready to go to work, "It’s an amazing thing to be involved in when you see the effort that people put into it, we’ve got our work cut out for us, we’re going to beat last time and make it better," he said.

Tickets will officially go on sale for the event in early 2019.