With Spectra Place about to celebrate its first birthday, the City of Estevan is reflecting on what has been a busy year in the $22 million facility.
After a feverish fundraising campaign and roughly two years of construction, Spectra Place held its first event March 25, 2011 when the final fundraising dinner was hosted on the arena floor.
Since then Spectra Place has gradually become what many hoped it would be, a full-fledged events centre. Along with hosting local hockey teams, the facility has proven to be an excellent, and popular, location for walkers.
It has also hosted handful of concerts and two MMA events, beginning with the Tom Cochrane and Kim Mitchell double bill in April. Fellow Canadian artists Hedley and Paul Brandt have also taken to the stage.
The year has also presented a tremendous learning curve for City staff who have had to learn the ins and outs of a new building and also gain experience in hosting major events with 3,000 people in attendance, something that was never a possibility with the Civic Auditorium.
Although there were some early growing pains, such as long lines at the concessions and problems with the ice plant, the staff has continued to make adjustments and the problems faced early on have been apparently smoothed over as Spectra Place drew solid reviews during its most recent events.
City manager Jim Puffalt, who is the acting leisure services manager, said he is pleased with how staff have handled any issues and feels Spectra Place is to the point where people are only noticing the event and not problems with the building.
"We came out pretty good on the concert and events but there were some issues that we needed to fix," Puffalt said. "Over the last three that we have done over the last month we have fixed the majority of the issues. What we are trying to accomplish is to have people enjoy the experience and you walk away going 'great place.'"
Puffalt noted a big factor in reducing the lines has been the addition of volunteer staff from various groups around the city. Realizing, they needed more staff, the City enlisted the help of groups such as the Estevan Bruins and Rotary Club who have supplied workers in exchange for contributions to their respective organizations.
The City has also put out the call to other local groups and said they are willing to work out similar arrangements to any interested parties. Puffalt said the addition of quick pour keg machines, selling tokens and going to cash only in a handful of locations has also been helpful.
The last month has been a good example of the ongoing learning curve and evolution for the City and staff with regards to the operation of the building.
Over that span, Spectra Place has hosted the Hedley concert, Estevan Bruins regular season and playoff games, Hard Knocks MMA and Friday's Paul Brandt concert. With the events packed so tightly together, staff has been required to complete a quick turnaround of the facility going from a hockey rink to a concert venue and then back to a rink over three days.
Puffalt said there were some issues early on as staff learned how to transition the building and much like they found with their lineup problems, adding more people to the mix has been a huge help. For example, following the Hedley concert, the arena was ready just in time for the Bruins game the following day at 6 p.m. After the recent Hard Knocks MMA card, they were flooding the ice by 10 a.m. the following day.
"We are now using the full resources of the City, we are not just limiting it to leisure services staff," he said. "We had public works come and put down the floor and they get it down in an hour now."
The operation of other facets such as the ice plant has presented yet another challenge for staff. Early on there had been complaints raised about the quality of the ice as well as problems with the plant going down overnight. However, Puffalt said they are continuing to work on those issues and feels they turned a corner earlier this year.
"I really think we hit it in early February. The ice was really good and there had been days where it was hit or miss before that. I think we found the right temperature and the right adjustments to make as there are more people in the building."
Looking to the future, Puffalt said the challenge will be finding a proper balance between hosting major events and meeting all ice requirements for local teams and clubs. He noted that hosting three large events, as well as Bruins hockey games within a month was a grind on staff members and in the future they would like to see things spaced out a little better.
"We have to find that balance because we know doing three major events in four weeks is hard on everybody - staff, our customers and regular users.
"We are getting calls from across the country - talent companies are talking to us about booking events. We want to get to the stage where we are doing one or two a month. We are in a tremendous position for those between Regina and Winnipeg. As people are heading east or west, we have an overnight stop where they can come, find a tremendous facility, 3,000 fans and put on another concert in between. People are starting to get that we are out there. It's a great venue and the crowds have been awesome. We want to fill out our fall schedule and our early winter schedule so we are looking into 2013 already at what is out there and what we could bring into Estevan."
Among the events already confirmed is the Shrine Circus which is set for late May and the Simple Plan concert in August which, like the Hedley show, will feature four acts.
