The Civic Auditorium was a lot of things to a lot of people, but one role it didn't need to fill is to be closed in the middle of the ice season.
Estevan is the kind of community that needs three indoor rinks during the winter to accommodate the huge demand. Or at the very least, two and a half. The rinks are constantly busy during the evenings and weekends. As of right now, there's very little other ice time that can be used for kids or adults without a huge cost.
So what's to be done?
I've heard – still hearsay – that the cost to bring the Civic up to code will be in the millions. If it were the only rink in town it might be the only viable option rather than building new.
Another strategy I heard was to remove the troublesome parts of the indoor parts of the Civic and keep the ice surface in an open air facility. But even the cost of that would be far too much for what would amount to a natural ice facility.
But perhaps the most disturbing thing I learned over the past week or two was the fact that the Civic was 60 years old and no one really knew how bad it had gotten. As an outsider, I just sort of assumed that the Civic had passed the requisite safety requirements to come into use for the 2017-18 winter. I mean, kids as young as 3 and 4 were changing into their skates there in the dressing rooms just a couple of weeks ago. It had to be safe, right?
On top of that, now here comes the furrowed-brow 'We Need To Have A Meeting' part of this where we find out the full extent of the cost of the damage of this. Taxpayers aren't going to be happy about this because they generally aren't when they have an unexpected expense coming. So the 'We Need To Have A Meeting' meeting is something a lot of people and stakeholders here will be dreading.
The impression that I get from talking to people is that no one really wants to go into an era of two indoor rinks for a community this size but no one is quite prepared to spend the necessary money to either get that third, ancient rink under code or build a new one (where that proposed new minor sports rink would be is its own series of columns).
Here's the idea for now and 20 years from now:
Even bringing the Civic to code means you've got a rink where Julius Caesar played his atom hockey that you're just patching it till the next major crisis. So you build new, starting now. Auction off the seats and nets and assorted building stuff and get as much money as you can from that. Partner now, right now, with a couple or three of the major Saskatchewan oilpatch industries. A major Canadian oil company just got $940 million from the sale of a Weyburn facility. Surely they can toss a fraction of a fraction of that into a new building here and help the kids of their workers. They aren't the only ones that can toss money into a new rink so go to others and mitigate the immediate costs to taxpayers.
Rink building prices invariably go up. Start building as soon as May's thaw allows you and maybe you'll be done in time for January, 2019. Or pay a bit more and have a full few years of just Affinity Place and Power Dodge Ice Centre. Your call.
The demand for three indoor rinks exists here. For the sake of everyone, fill that demand.
