Send Chelmsford rink users to Levack

Repairs to the Chelmsford Community Arena next spring could be a short-term boost to the I.J. Coady Arena in Levack.

The city's community services committee recently approved a $2.335 million plan to renovate the rink, a process that will start in April 2014 and finish by September 2015. That means users in Chelmsford will need somewhere to play until repairs are done.

In the past, the city has asked rinks in other communities to give eight per cent of their ice time to the affected users. However, with the city already working on a strategy to increase usage at Coady, Ward 2 Coun. Jacques Barbeau said the timing couldn't be better.

“A great solution would be to have those users in Chelmsford move to Coady, rather than having users from Walden or Copper Cliff move to Coady,” Barbeau said. Although, he admitted, “people in Chelmsford may not agree.”

There was some talk of closing the arena in Levack in January when it was presented as an option in a report looking at the state of all Sudbury's rinks. It has the lowest usage in the city, and the report said closing Coady and building a two-pad arena in Chelmsford could be a better option.

However, residents in that community organized opposition and are working to find ways to shift more users to Levack, such as offering discounted rates. Ward 3 Coun. Claude Berthiaume said a second ice pad in the community would have been welcome.

“It would have been great, but not to the detriment of the other (rink),” he said. “All the arenas are quite important to their communities.”

He also praised the fact renovations in Chelmsford will expand dressing room facilities for female hockey players.

“It's important to them because more girls are playing hockey now than ever before,” Berthiaume said.
The dressing rooms is one of the reasons why costs for the renovation have increased by about $1 million compared to an initial estimate. Lighting retrofits and the need to fully replace the wooden benches at Chelmsford also increased the final cost estimate.

Ray Mensour, the city's manager of arenas, said the last time a rink was closed temporarily, each remaining rink gave up a certain amount of ice time to the affected users.

“But another option is moving the Chelmsford users into Coady, and expanding the hours there, too,” Mensour said.

Ward 5 Coun. Ron Dupuis said repairing Chelmsford instead of building a new arena will save the city almost $20 million, and moving the users to Levack for the year will help them, too.

“It's a win-win situation for everyone.”

Discussion of a report on what it would take to reopen Barrydowne Arena in New Sudbury was deferred as Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann was away because of a family issue.

But the report estimated it would cost almost $3.9 million to repair the arena so it could be used for hockey and figure skating. It would cost $1.34 million to make repairs necessary for it to be used as a community centre.

The arena closed a decade ago, and would require a new ice pad ($650,000), a new refrigeration plant ($520,000), and more than $950,000 in internal and external repairs, among other investments.
Currently, the former rink is being rented to Northern Ontario's film studio, Hideaway Pictures.