A new arena can’t come soon enough to accommodate St. Albert hockey players, figure skaters and even new skaters.
There are five indoor ice arenas available for St. Albert ice users – two at Akinsdale/Kinex and three at Servus Place.
About $11 million for a new arena is currently slotted into the proposed 10-year capital plan for 2019 and is listed as an extra sheet of ice for Servus Place. There’s $1 million proposed in 2018 for the project too.
That new rink can’t come fast enough for some, as minor hockey players on St. Albert teams already find themselves often heading out of town to find ice time in other communities due to high demand for St. Albert-based ice time.
“We don’t have enough,” said Dave Bell, the president of St. Albert Minor Hockey Association. He said they lose hours of city-based ice annually as other groups such as ringette, skating and junior B hockey grows, as the available local time has to be shared fairly.
Inadequate ice time availability in St. Albert has been an issue for minor hockey for the last five years, Bell said. While the number of players and teams stays about the same – just over 1,800 youth and kids play minor hockey in St. Albert – their ice time in city boundaries has decreased.
“Our teams will go as far as Bon Accord, River Cree,” Bell said, noting that sometimes it’s up to an hour’s drive in winter weather conditions one way for some players to reach the outside arena.
The association teamed up with the city to look at synthetic ice surfaces last year, but after the pilot concluded it was determined it didn’t meet their needs.
Bell said the number of hockey players in St. Albert alone justifies the need for an additional arena.
“Our members, our parents will spend on the plus side of a half a million dollars annually for outside ice,” Bell said, pointing out that that’s revenue spent outside of the city.
He noted the safety concerns of having residents driving so far out of town for hockey practice in poor weather conditions.
“We know just for hockey, we’re one rink behind,” Bell said, suggesting it might be more economic to build two rinks at the same time and tie them into the same ice plant. Bell said the group is impatient and concerned that if a new arena is built in 2019, St. Albert might be even further behind in terms of a population to ice rink ratio.
“The sooner the better,” he said.
Don Cowan, skating director at the St. Albert Skating Centre, said so far the city ice availability hasn’t been a huge issue because he is able to schedule some of his group’s time during the day, when there’s less demand.
But the centre, representing figure skaters, power skaters and beginners, is struggling to access the ice during the summer season, moving locations to accommodate a hockey school and having to negotiate to get ice in over at Akinsdale/Kinex.
“We’ve made it work over the last couple years,” he said.
The programs have been growing in popularity the past few years, and if they continue to do so, Cowan could see a need for more ice availability.
The city’s community recreation branch manager said ice use during the busy September-March season is at about 98-per-cent capacity.
Kelly McConnell said total ice use has grown from 12,733 hours in 2010 to 19,600 in 2013.
While peak season ice use hasn’t grown that much since 2009 – there wasn’t much room to increase it – demand for ice time in the April-August season has increased.
“We’re very fortunate that we have very strong organizations or ice users, they work very co-operatively to try and accommodate each other and ensure that their programs are able to go forward,” McConnell said.
At Thursday night’s budget meeting, council asked city staff about St. Albert groups heading out of town for recreational needs.
They heard that most of the out-of-town use is for arenas, and that the minor hockey association rents about 85 hours a week outside of the community.
In an interview, Mayor Nolan Crouse said that 2019 is “about right” for a new arena in his opinion.
“Yes, we need another one,” Crouse said. However, he said a report on triggers for new city facilities will be delivered to council in January.
