There’s a plan taking shape to demolish the Charles A. Barbour arena in the Grant Park neighbourhood, and build two rinks in its place.
The city-owned building has cracked walls, small dressing rooms, and bathrooms in need of upgrades.
The Corydon Community Centre wants to take over the aging arena, knock it down, and build an indoor twin rink facility, modeled after the MTS Iceplex with larger dressing rooms and hallways.
The city has had no luck in finding private sector partners to take over its crumbling arenas.
Councillor Harvey Smith is on the committee that oversees indoor rinks.
He says if the Corydon Community Centre comes to the table with enough money, this could be the solution.
"This could be a direction we could go for this one and for others,” Smith said.
Pat O’Connor is the executive director of the Corydon Community Centre. He says the twin rinks would cost around $15 million to build.
There would have to be help from all levels of government and the community.
But the community centre is confident it could operate and maintain the new facility because it has had success with its own arena.
“We know that we have a model at River Heights that has worked. It's been stable. We generate a lot of revenue from that facility,” said O’Connor.
The Corydon Community Centre says in a perfect world a new arena would spring up in 2015.
