According to the Traverse City Record-Eagle’s Jake Atnip, Centre ICE Arena in Traverse City has finished upgrading its facility to NHL standards, affording the rink the ability to hold the Red Wings’ prospect tournament and main training camp in September…
But the rink is still attempting to raise funds to pay for the renovations:
“We are lucky that half of the $220,000 was covered by Traverse City Tourism and obviously we have raised some of the money,” [Centre ICE executive director Terry] Marchand said. “The great thing is that I was able to borrow money. We had to borrow the money to pay for this.”
Cherryland Co-Op allows members to borrow money with up to a 10-year payback with no interest. Marchand is happy they were able to take advantage of the program, but hopes to raise enough money to offset the loan.
Centre Ice took out a $100,000 loan from Cherryland to cover the rest of the renovation, and raised $37,344 of that so far. A donation deadline at the end of Training Camp in September could get those numbers even closer.
The arena will need to dish out another big chunk of change soon, Marchand said.
“We’ve got another thing going on right now that a lot of people don’t know about,” Marchand said. “We have a thing called an ammonia chiller back in our compressor room and it is a huge chiller. That and the compressors are what make it possible to have ice. We thought we were going to get another five years out of it and it is failing. We are right in the process in the next 30 days of replacing that, which is $200,000.”
Continued, and you can visit Centre ICE’s fundraising page if you’d like to give a hand.
I don’t kow why the Wings just don’t pay for this themselves. $250k-$300k would be nothing for them. Pay the money and keep the tourney and training camp there for as long as they want. This seems like it’s more complicated than it needs to be.
It’s more a case of Centre Ice trying to keep the Wings coming up to Traverse City. With Little Caesar’s Arena the trend going forward may be to have all prospect activities and training camp in Detroit. The July Development Camp has already been moved to LCA.
In exchange for Centre Ice doing these NHL-dictated upgrades, the Red Wings have committed to the Prospects Tournament and Training Camp in Traverse City for at least the next 5 years. After that, both could very well move to LCA….much to my chagrin.