Ice Center increasing capacity
A half-million dollar renovation is underway at the George S. Eccles Ice Center in North Logan and is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 30.
The new additions will include about 1,000 new bleachers, individual seats on many of the existing bleachers, new bathrooms and a dehumidifier.
“Our capacity will be 2,000 when this whole project is done,” Ice Center fundraising manager Janet Borg said.
All the money for the project was donated by the Eccles foundation, the Cache County Recreation Art, Park and Museum Tax, the Cache Valley Specialty Hospital, the USU hockey club, Icon Health and Fitness and other community businesses and individual donors.
“It’s more generosity that I can ever get used too,” Borg said.
The hockey club raised ticket prices $1 for non-students this season to help pay for new seats. Borg said the rink was built to accomadate the large crowds that attend each USU hockey game.
Borg expects more people to show up to hockey games now that there will be better seating.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of people who didn’t ever want to come back after watching hockey games on the cold concrete,” Borg said. “Even aluminum, which is cold, is more comfortable than concrete,” she said.
Borg said most of the seats will be reserved seating.
“People don’t come because they don’t want to give up their seats and they don’t want to fight for them,” she said.
The new retractable bleachers, as opposed to the permanent cement bleachers on the existing side, will allow for off-ice training and a curling sheet.
The Ice Center has also struggled without a dehumidifier, having to repaint the inside of the rink once already.
“We knew we couldn’t survive another season without it,” Borg said.
Borg said the new additions were part of the original plans of the Ice Center, but it did not have the money to build them at the time of construction.
“We shelled in all the stuff we couldn’t afford when we opened because we knew we’d get the money down the road someday,” Borg said. “We had to open for the Olympics.”
The Ice Center was not built by the Olympics, but was used by Olympic athletes for practices.
“This is the renegade rink,” Borg said. “There was no support from the Olympic Committee for this facility.”
Because it was not an official Olympic rink, competing countries could practice as they wished at the Ice Center. Borg said that regular Olympic practices are heavily regulated.
After the renovation, the Ice Center will still be far from complete.
“We still have about $1 million and a half to go,” Borg said. “We just have a huge list of things that we still need to build.”
Future additions include two new locker rooms, a new classroom, landscaping and a paved parking lot.
“We’re waiting to do roads until the 200 East project is completed,” Borg said. “They’re probably going to have a final [meeting] by February.”
Borg said that one of the 200 East proposals will have the road going through the existing dirt parking lot, which is why it has not been completed yet.
Borg also said that there were other features that the Ice Center wanted, but is no longer able to build.
“This was designed to have a whole mezzanine [above the lobby] with private boxes looking out over the rink, concessions, an excercise room and meeting rooms,” Borg. “That was an extra $800,000 and we just didn’t have the money.”
Borg said that unlike other features that are being added, the infrastructure of the rink will not support a mezzzanine level anymore because they did not have enough money to put it in at the initial construction.
Borg said the Eccles Ice Center is better managed that most ice rinks in the state.
“From a management point of view, this is the most efficient ice arena in the state because it was designed to run as a day-to-day community facility,” Borg said.
Borg said most other ice rinks in Utah were built as showpieces for the Olympics and did not have day-to-day operations in mind when they were designed.
She also said this will be one of the only rinks in Utah with seating on both sides of the ice.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu