Task force to decide future of old arena

DENISE RIDEOUT

Iqaluit city council wants to bring together a group of residents who use the city’s two arenas to brainstorm ways to keep both facilities open.

In the next few months, city council will launch the “arena task force,” a committee of arena users. The task force will be made up of at least one city councillor and up to six community members.

Their goal will be to come up with innovative ways to keep the two hockey rinks running.

The city is currently paying to operate the Arnaitok Ipeelee Arena, a 30-year-old facility located downtown, and the Arctic Winter Games Complex, which was built last year on the Road to Apex.

In the city’s 2003 budget, which was passed on Dec. 15, city council committed to spend $300,000 to operate the Arnaitok Ipeelee Arena this year.

For the following years, city council will put $200,000 a year into the arena and it will be up to sports groups, residents and local business to come up with the remaining $100,000 each year to pay for its day-to-day operating costs.

“People app-eared to be favorable to the idea of some type of joint funding arrangement whereby the city pays some and then the community user groups step forward and pay a chunk as well,” Iqaluit Mayor John Matthews said in an interview.

“That’s what we’re hoping will happen.”

The newly formed arena task force will bat around ideas about how sports groups and businesses can raise the $100,000 they need.

“This is a group that can work together,” Matthews said. “The city will be a part of it, but it will have volunteers from the minor hockey association who can obviously add some direction to it.”

Ever since a new arena was built for the 2002 Arctic Winter Games, city council has known that it can’t afford to operate both rinks.

The city was paying out $300,000 to run the Arnaitok arena on a yearly basis.

Traditionally, the arena’s users, mainly hockey teams and skaters, paid about $45,000 a year in user fees.

But most of those users moved to the new, NHL-size arena when it was built, leaving the Arnaitok rink with just $30,000 a year in revenue.

City council told Iqaluit residents that paying for two arenas was putting pressure on its already strained budget. If Arnaitok was shut down, city council said, the $270,000 it would save annually could be put toward a new swimming pool or running a public transit system.

City council also said the two arenas were not being used to their capacity. When the second rink was opened, the total available ice time increased by 80 per cent, but the number of users went up only 20 per cent. City council asked residents if it made sense to run two facilities for the mere 400 people who were using them regularly.

But during a public meeting in July, hockey players, coaches and skaters begged city council not to shut down Iqaluit’s oldest arena. They said it didn’t make sense to close a recreational facility when Iqaluit’s population is growing such a high rate.

Residents also said the Arnaitok Arena serves the downtown area, while the Arctic Winter Games Complex caters to people living in Apex and the eastern part of Iqaluit.

After making their emotional pleas, arena users got what they asked for. City council agreed to keep Arnaitok open for one more year and then turn to the community to help finance the old rink.

The idea to create the arena task force came out of that public meeting.