About 50 people showed up for the Castlegar and District Recreation Commission’s Jan. 9 meeting to express their disapproval of plans to close the Pioneer Arena.
The commission heard a verbal presentation from Jarret Leason on behalf of the Save the Pioneer Coalition. He wants to see the pending closure of the 66-year-old arena cancelled or at the least, delayed. He also directed the commission’s attention to an online petition with 1,700 signatures.
“I strongly believe … that the Pioneer Arena should remain in operation until a replacement is in service or indefinitely if work is completed to upgrade and/or extend the life of the arena,” said Leason.
The eventual closure of the arena has been included in the City of Castlegar’s (the property owner) and the Regional District of Central Kootenay’s (the arena manager) plans for almost 15 years. In 2009, an architectural assessment gave the arena a remaining value of life expectancy score of seven per cent.
“A score of seven per cent indicates that the majority of building components are currently beyond their expected lifespan and that the facility as a whole is largely exhausted,” states the report.
At the meeting, RDCK manager of community services Joe Chirico explained, “What end of life means is that there should not be any new investment in that facility because of the facility’s age — that it would be more economical to build a new facility in its place.”
In 2016, the City of Castlegar stated in its master plan that “the Pioneer Arena is nearing the end of its useful life and should be decommissioned once it is deemed unsafe.”
Also in 2016, the RDCK determined the arena had reached its end of life and that any major repair would trigger its decommissioning.
But it isn’t safety or a major repair that has finally triggered the end of the arena. It’s the opportunity to build a four-storey building with the the bottom floor dedicated to health-care professionals and about 40 housing units on the upper floors. The final composition of units has yet to be determined, but initial plans call for a mix of sizes and a mix of affordable and market housing.
The City of Castlegar, the RDCK, all current Castlegar physicians, health care administration provider Prima Health and commercial real estate management company Axis Projects all signed a memorandum of understanding for the project in October 2023. Construction is expected to begin within an 18-month to three-year window and the arena was slated for closure at the end of this year’s ice season.
The decision has left a number of ice users unhappy.
Leason’s presentation concluded with “We are not going to stop fighting until the Pioneer is saved.”
The statement was met with cheers and applause from the audience.
Even though the RDCK has begun public consultations on “reimagining recreation” in Castlegar, any possibility of a new replacement arena is still several years away.
“The goal of the reimagination project is to find a clear understanding of what services and to what the level the community of Castlegar and Electoral Areas I and J want to see and are willing to financially support,” said Trisha Davison, regional manager of Recreation and Clients Services in a report to the RDCK board on Dec. 14.
With two failed referendums for improvements to the Castlegar Community Complex that included new ice sheets in the rear-view mirror, the recreation commission wants to have a good idea of what the community as a whole will support before going to another referendum.
That includes if they want to pay for an additional sheet of ice. While this seems like a given to the hockey and skating community, not everyone in the Castlegar area sees it as a necessity.
During public consultation and surveys related to the development of the City of Castlegar’s Master Plan in 2016, 27 per cent of respondents said they “strongly supported” “the enhancement of the Community Complex with a new regulation size ice sheet to replace the Pioneer Arena.” Another 26 per cent said they “somewhat supported” the proposal while 22 per cent were “unsure,” 12 per cent were “somewhat opposed” and 13 per cent were “strongly opposed.”
Far more respondents supported enhancements to the aquatic centre portion of the complex with 35 per cent saying they “strongly supported” and 35 per cent saying they “somewhat supported” the improvements. Only seven per cent said they “strongly opposed” and eight per cent said they “somewhat opposed” aquatic enhancements.
In the 2018 referendum, a second sheet of ice, arena storage and change rooms, team rooms, a social hub/lobby and office expansion, a fitness area expansion, a new leisure pool and a lobby extension were all grouped together on the ballot with a price tag of $22 million.
The decision was made to group everything together because surveys done by the Recreation Commission at the time showed that most residents would support the full package of enhancements, with 62 per cent of respondents saying yes.
In the end, Area I residents voted against the proposal and receiving voter approval in all three separate polling areas was a requirement of the referendum, so the proposal failed even though 51.9 per cent of voters voted in favour of it.
“This won’t be popular in this room, this isn’t where every member of Castlegar thinks we need two sheets of ice,” said Mayor Maria McFaddin, who also sits on the Recreation Commission. “Our job is to balance everyone’s positions equally … That is the difficult position we have to sit in, and that hasn’t been black and white.”
McFaddin then called for civility going forward in arena discussions.
“These conversations get heated, and people don’t feel like they can have a voice,” said McFaddin.
She said she had heard from four people in the last few days who felt uncomfortable with the way that proponents of the petition had approached them.
“I think these conversations are extremely important to have, but they need to be done in a respectful manner that understands that not everyone thinks alike.
“Those who don’t use the sheets of ice don’t think the same way as those that do.”