Iqaluit begins next stage of Arnaitok Arena upgrades

The City of Iqaluit will spend nearly $50,000 on electrical and building drawings to map out Arnaitok Arena prior to starting renovations on the “heart” of the facility, said the city’s recreation director.

The arena, originally built in the 1970s, needs updated drawings before the city can install a new ice plant, which is the refrigerator-like system that keeps the ice frozen, said Stephanie Clark, adding the current ice plant is “still functioning, but it’s aging.”

“Much like any sort of mechanical infrastructure, the older you get, the more you have to weigh whether or not just keeping and patching and repairing is going to actually make fiscal sense,” she said in an interview.

“Especially when there’s new things on the market that allow us to be more efficient.”

The new ice plant will help the city save on energy costs, avoid disruptions due to unforeseen problems, keep the arena open year-round and hopefully, extend the life of the arena by decades, Clark said.

City councillors voted unanimously Tuesday evening to hire Iqaluit engineering company Stantec to map out the facility.

The company is the best fit for the job because it is based in Iqaluit, which could save the city room and board expenses, and has already completed a project proposal, the city’s capital planning director, Sumon Ghosh, said Tuesday.

He noted that the city could be paying higher prices because it chose not to put out a request for proposals.

“We have very little time to turn around this project,” Ghosh said. “Stantec … has worked in this area before; they are familiar with the site.”

Clark said there isn’t a timeline for when the mapping will be complete, but Stantec won’t be interfering with the rink itself, and won’t interrupt any of the scheduled activities and events.

Clark estimated it will take two years for the ice plant installation to be complete, factoring in that the ice plant may need to be built on site.

The entire project for the first year has been budgeted at $200,000, and Clark said some of that may be covered by funding from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.

However, the ice plant project is one of many that Clark said the city wants to complete.

There’s $400,000 budgeted for Arnaitok Arena upgrades in 2022, besides the ice plant, according to the city’s capital plan.

Clark said the city has already installed accessible doors that have a push button and a new elevator that will be working soon.

Some improvements the city wants to make are building a ramp heading into the facility, upgrading the washrooms and renovating the floors.

“[Arnaitok] is really important to this community and it’s really well-used. It’s such a critical piece of infrastructure, so we want to make sure that we’re able to have it for as long as possible,” Clark said.