Town eyes arena expansion

Times Reporter

 

A request was sent out to the Arena Advisory Board Members to attend the July 19 regular council meeting to discuss the possible construction of a natural ice facility. 

The potential new building would be a pole building, attached to the current arena. It would be closed in with dressing rooms, but will have a natural ice surface.

“An artificial ice surface is drastically needed and something that is a natural ice surface, even though it is in the building, with the limited use you can’t really schedule it for use because you don’t know what the weather is going to be like, you don’t know whether or not you can use it creates us a problem,” said Wayne Hansen, Strathmore Minor Hockey, SMH, president.

Right now Hansen said SMH teams will go to Standard, Hussar, and Gleichen to use the ice because they know it will be there. He said the parents and members of SMH pay a fee and expect to be able to get the ice time they are paying for. 

As part of SMH bylaws there must be a certain amount of ice per week provided to each team. Hansen said SMH go out of town for 50 per cent of their ice time. Therefore the town loses that revenue. 

“By putting another ice surface up there at the Family Centre would create a big problem when it come to parking, especially when there’s events happening the nights of the games being scheduled, and then you bring all this extra traffic into this other arena. Apparently there isn’t enough parking spaces there now for people attending these games,” said Councillor John Rempel. 

“The town desperately needs probably two more ice rinks immediately and depending on what growth forecast you have, that’s going to change very quickly, so yes if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right but the biggest thing is, if you’re going to do something get the associations involved,” said Hansen.

“There can be fundraising done, minor hockey has made it very clear that we would support any fundraising efforts that were required to raise a portion to help fill in on any grants or anything else to get this done.” 

“As far as the town is concerned, I don’t think that the town is going to be building another twin ice arena in the foreseeable future, so if you know of anybody in the private sector that’s interested in coming in here and doing something, well I think we’re all ears,” said Rempel. 

Mayor Steve Grajczyk told Hansen they know that SMH needs more ice, and he would like to see administration and the minor hockey work together to see if a solution can be reached.