Municipal Rinks in Crisis

Copyright (c) 2010 Tim Oldfield

Sound familiar? Municipal Rink Shortage. Rink Cash Shortfall. Communities Struggle to Save Rink. Pick your headline but the story is a familair one within hundreds of municipalities across North America. At a time when child obesity is raging and communities need to encourage more forms of activity sports associations that use rinks are forced to maintain or even shrink their membership to avoid reductions in available ice times.

So what is the solution?

Part of the municipal solution is to research and investigate high quality synthetic ice companies that provide very high performance and safe synthetic ice solutions. These rinks can literally save any municipality millions of capital and operating dollars by complementing, deferring or even replacing existing mechanically refrigerated artificial ice arenas.

Several manufacturers of synthetic ice have developed excellent products that is very realistic, but chances are it will never completely replace real ice. However it should become part of the rink mix moving forward. Some municipalities are very progressive in their thinking and have taken steps to run pilot projects in their communities. The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Northern Alberta for example received support from their council to run a series of synthetic ice pilots - with great success. As a result of those pilots they have decided to tender a complete ice surface for the Archie Simpson Arena in Fort Chipewyan. This is a very unique situation in that this surface is a gravel base and they rely on mother nature to create the natural ice surface for 6 months of the year. The idea is that the synthetic panels will be placed on the gravel surface and then water will be frozen over that during the winter months. Spring and summer skating will then take place! on the synthetic surface.

Hopefully this project paves the way for many more like it, so it will be an interesting one to follow. Municipalities can take comfort in knowing that their investment in these products can be warranted for up to ten years for indoor use. Some manufacturers offer a completely UV stable product. These products can then be used outdoors. Life expectancy for the premium products is 20 - 25 years where everyday use is expected.

Synthetic ice is not the complete answer for solving North America's rink issues but it certainly needs to be taken seriously.