Bank closes down bankrupt Planet Ice
Dozens of hockey players and other skaters suffered a shutout Tuesday when AmericanWest Bank closed Planet Ice after selling the rink to a manufacturing company.
Upset users criticized the bank for closing the rink without notice, leaving them scrambling for ice less than halfway into the hockey and skating seasons.
“It’s an unfortunate situation for a lot of people. That it happened so rapidly doesn’t make things much easier,” said Aaron Halvorsen, president of the Eastern Washington University hockey club.
The EWU club uses Planet Ice for practices and games. With a dozen home games to go, the team found out it was homeless several hours before a scheduled practice, Halvorsen said. “A lot of guys are fairly upset.”
Heidi Cleveland, vice president of marketing for AmericanWest Bank, declined to give a timeline for the Spokane Valley rink’s closure in a Saturday story in The Spokesman-Review.
“I really did not know,” Cleveland said Tuesday. “All I was told was it was going to be soon.”
An employee at Moco Engineering Fabrications confirmed the company put an offer on the rink, but declined to give further details.
Users had banded together, pledging money for a last-ditch effort to buy the facility. But the offer arrived after a due-diligence period lapsed in the purchase agreement, Cleveland said.
George Postlethwaite, a chiropractor who organized a group to buy and save the rink, said the bank refused an offer made Friday. “I was told they would not accept it,” he said.
AmericanWest Bank ended up with the 6-year-old rink, located on North Eden Road, off Barker Road, after its owners defaulted on nearly $4 million in loans.
For three years the bank operated the rink. It lost nearly $2 million as it lowered its sales price while trying to attract a buyer who would keep it an ice rink, Cleveland said.
Karin Künzle-Watson, a former Olympian who teaches and coaches at Planet Ice, said someone from the bank arrived in the morning and told her the rink would close after her class left the ice.
“I have skaters coming in for sessions this afternoon and they find a note on the door,” Künzle-Watson said Tuesday.
Künzle-Watson is the coach of several promising competitive figure skaters, including Kalie Budvarson and Chris Anders, novice pairs who skated at the 2004 national championships. She believes the closure is bad news for a region vying for big skating events, like the 2009 World Figure Skating Championships.
The closure makes it tough to get ice times that are reasonable for children, something crucial to Mountain Youth Hockey and Inland Empire Amateur Hockey associations, which have hundreds of kids using the ice.
Plus, a rink like Riverfront Park’s Ice Palace isn’t large enough for older youth or adult hockey games.
KYRO in Coeur d’Alene could handle some overflow, but the facility is closed for construction work. Those associated with the rink said a best-case scenario for its reopening would be later this month or December.
EWU has a rink planned as part of a larger campus recreation facility, but it likely won’t be completed until 2007, Halvorsen said. For now, the club is trying to arrange to finish its current season at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.
“We’re not the only team in this situation,” Halvorsen said. “Obviously there’s not going to be enough ice in the Spokane area.”