The Russ Robertson Arena is finally getting new cement pads.
Lloydminster council awarded the contract the Bexson Construction Ltd. in the amount of $1,669,712. The project came in over budget requiring an additional $320,169 to be allocated from reserves.
The arena pad is original to the facility, has seen continual usage for 48 years, and is beginning to show age through cracking and pad movement.
Replacing the pad is not the only thing the scope of work entails.
“The idea is to get rid of some concrete, create steps and go into more of ice level for seating,” said Joel Turcotte, director of recreation and cultural services, City of Lloydminster. “It’s about 150 seats we would move from the (Centennial) Civic Centre.”
Many of the seats present at the Civic Centre have logos attached to them and Mayor Gerald Aalbers says the seats being moved would not have them attached.
“They would likely be without logos, I would think,” he said.
Coun. David Lopez asked about the future of the Russ Robertson, specifically citing old drawings of twinning the facility.
“If we’re planning to do something additional to the Russ Robertson in the next few years, I almost feel like it’s better to hold off on this project, get a bigger plan, and do this whole thing once instead of just piecing it together,” he said.
“There were original plans in the ‘90s that looked at the twinning of that facility. When they did the construction to renovate the lobby and the change rooms, we looked at the opportunities there,” said Tracy Simpson, executive manager of community development services.
“There are some infrastructure challenges related to sanitary and stormwater that would be detrimental financially to adding infrastructure into that part of the city. It’s more realistic to build new somewhere else than to add on to this facility.”
According to Simpson, expansion wasn’t contemplated at that point, and it was never re-evaluated at the city. She says when the city did the feasibility study looking at recreation for arenas and aquatics, this wasn’t one of the top locations for additional ice in the community.
Coun. Jim Taylor asked how the common person would be able to see the designs of the new pad system at the Russ.
Turcotte painted a picture of what the actual construction process would look like.
“Think about the arena pad as being inside that board system, so that board system will move over to the north about 30 inches, I think 33 inches. That’ll provide more room going around that, as you know it’s very tight to get into the back. The player benches and the penalty boxes will actually swap areas,” he said.
The player benches will be moving to the south side where the penalty boxes currently are, giving player benches a little more space.
“They’re wide right now but they’re not very long,” explained Turcotte.
He says even with the new seats coming in, the amount of seating will remain nearly identical to what’s available now.
“There’s about 150 seats coming in. It will be kind of a walk down, so they’ll chew up that cement because right now it’s all single pad there. Those 150 seats will come in, plus there’ll be a standing location very similar to what you see at the Servus Sports Centre field houses,” said Turcotte.
While the changes will have a positive impact on user experience, the facility is still not entirely accessible.
“(This) also allows for something like sledge hockey to happen there, we’re not fully accessible quite yet. Unfortunately there’ll be some accessible seating with this plan but there’s still a little bit of a stairway down into the rink. It’s hard to get out of that, might be able to add a ramp in those situations,” said Turcotte.
There’ll also be a new board system keeping players safer.
“The board system right now is right on the cement, there’s zero give onto that cement. Doing it the way we’re doing it will help with player safety a little bit,” said Turcotte.
Overall, according to Turcotte, these changes will give the flooring another 50 years of life.
The city has also added a larger contingency to the project, which is where most of the extra $320,169 is going.
The cost to move the chairs from the Civic Centre is roughly $8,000.
Construction on this project is anticipated to start in late May and be completed no later than October.
Council passed the motion to allocate additional funding to the project and award the contract to Bexon Construction Ltd. with Coun. Justin Vance voting in opposition.
Read more: Russ Robertson in need of repairs
