2018 the target for new Palouse Ice Rink
Talks about building a new Palouse Ice Rink have been ongoing for the past decade, but Tony Mangini, vice president of the Palouse Ice Rink Board, hopes to turn that talk into action by breaking ground on the new facility in the spring of 2018.
While Mangini said that would be the ideal date, it may not be realistic.
The Moscow City Council expressed its support in August for a $3.6 million ice rink and its willingness to donate $1 million from the city’s Hamilton Fund to help pay for it.
The Hamilton Fund was created in 2000 when Bob Hamilton, a Moscow native and retired architect residing in Sequim, Wash., died and bequeathed the bulk of his estate – $5 million – to the city to benefit Moscow’s youth. There is about $2.9 million left in the fund.
City staff has been working with the fairground facility’s board to negotiate conditions to be met for the board to receive the $1 million commitment, and Mangini said those conditions are close to being met.
“We have to be able to demonstrate we have enough resources to get a facility built before funds can be released,” Mangini said.
Mangini said the ice rink’s conditional use permit was extended last summer until July 2019 and construction needs to at least start before that summer.
“Otherwise there’s no guarantee the city’s going to extend that special use permit,” Mangini said.
City Supervisor Gary Riedner said the $1 million would be released as necessary to help fund the construction. If the ice rink board does not raise its portion of funds necessary for construction within the next three years, starting from the time the City Council officially approves the conditions of the $1 million commitment, then the commitment could go away, Riedner said.
“I’m hopeful that there’s got to be more people in this community besides the Hamilton family that see the value of investing in community resources,” Mangini said. “And hopefully we can find more people that are willing to make that commitment because we’re trying to do this without raising taxes or doing the traditional methods.”
As of August, the Palouse Ice Rink Board had raised $200,000 in cash and $200,000 in pledges toward construction, and Mangini said he does not think those numbers have increased much since then.
“The city agreement gives us leverage,” Mangini said. “That’s really what we’ve been waiting for is the more leverage we have the more we’re able to ask for from donors. Really this whole process has been put on hold waiting for that to be finalized.”
The ice rink board is working on a couple grants that have applications due soon, Mangini said.
Steve Bush, a member of the Palouse Ice Rink Board and part of the group that helped get the ice rink built, said the Rotary Veterans Memorial Pavilion, Inc. and the Palouse Ice Rink Association were responsible for getting the existing ice rink built. Bush said after the North/South Ski Bowl, a ski area in the Hoodoo Mountains of southern Benewah County, closed there were not many winter activities available for people locally. The ice rink filled that void, Bush said. The North/South Ski Bowl is now called Palouse Divide and it is for cross-country skiers, Bush said.
Mangini said the current structure is not sustainable. Its canvas tarp, which was placed on the structure in 2001, was designed to last 15 years, Mangini said.
“The community needs to understand that what we have now can’t continue,” Mangini said.
A powerful wind storm late in 2015 ripped off a strip of the canvas right along the west edge of the facility, condensation has caused water to drip from the ceiling and there are many holes in the canvas, Mangini said.
“It keeps the snow off,” he said. “For right now it does what it needs to do but every time we get a big wind storm it makes me nervous. When’s this thing going to completely fail?”
Mangini said he hopes money does not have to be spent to replace the canvas shell because the goal is to replace the facility with a full-sized ice rink.
The current rink is three-quarters of the size of a regulation hockey rink, which means hockey teams have to play games in Coeur d’Alene and Cheney, Mangini said.
“The initial rink was to show that there was a viable interest and now we’re past that point,” Mangini said. “We know there’s a viable interest. Now it’s just a matter of doing an enclosed facility that can operate like a normal ice rink would so that’s really our goal.”
Noise from the ice rink has been a concern to some nearby residents over the years. While Mangini said he does not promise the proposed facility will be soundproof, he said the noise levels will be reduced.
The new facility would be located over the majority of the existing site, and it will likely be shifted slightly to the north to create more parking spots, Mangini said.
“The closer we can get to having the number we need, the more likely people will support it because the message we’ve been getting consistently from donors is they just don’t want to make the commitment in the project that they’re not convinced is going to happen,” Mangini said. “And so the closer we can get to our goal the more likely people will want to get on board.”
Mangini said he would encourage people who are skeptical about committing money to a new ice rink to visit the facility on a weekend, particularly during an open public skate.
“You can’t even compare the amount of usage the ice rink gives to the community versus a very specific resource like a baseball field,” Mangini said, adding he is a baseball umpire and loves the game.
He said ice rink users range from 3 years old to 90, and residents use the rink for sports such as figure skating and broomball.
“That’s one of the unfortunate things about the ice rink is the perception that it’s just a hockey facility,” Mangini said. “It goes way beyond that.
”As many great resources we have in the summertime for outdoor activity, it’s really a challenge in this area to find good winter activities and the ice rink is one of the few,“ Mangini added. ”So I think people that tend to talk negatively about the ice rink really haven’t spent a lot of time there.“