Hockey and lacrosse fans are among more than 400 residents appealing to city hall to build a third arena in New Westminster.
Queen’s Park resident Daniel Fontaine recently launched an online petition to determine how much community support there is in the city for the initiative and to encourage city council to take action. The petition states a third arena would allow the city to host more frequent and larger sports tournaments that support local tourism activities and the local economy. It would also greatly increase the opportunity of the city to increase the flexibility of practice and game times, according to the petition.
“A city the size of New Westminster should have at least three arenas in order to support our lacrosse, hockey and other community activities,” states the petition. “Cities that are much smaller than New Westminster have more than two arenas to meet the needs of their local sports community.”
As the parent of a son who plays amateur hockey in New West, Fontaine said he’s experienced first-hand the challenge of dealing with the limited number of facilities in the city. He said that includes having limited practice times and forcing kids to leave the community for offerings like three-on-three hockey in the spring or summer because of limited ice and arena space.
“When I sat on the New Westminster Minor Hockey executive, I got to see the pressures first-hand as well around the work that our allocator had to do to try and juggle and get enough ice time. It was always, always a struggle for us to do that. That was the genesis of that,” he said. “Then when the Arenex collapsed back in December, it got me thinking. Really, as much as it’s a huge loss for the community, it also offers an opportunity for an open dialogue and discussion around the future of not only the Arenex but all sports facilities within the community.”
Fontaine said he thought he’d set up a petition to determine whether there was any interest in taking the idea to city council. Having set out to get 500 signatures, he’s closing in on that goal.
“I am thrilled. I have to say it has exceeded my expectation. I really haven’t done much to promote it other than Twitter, Facebook and my blog,” he said. “I had hoped by the summer we might reach 200 or 300 signatures on it.”
Fontaine is pleased that former NHL goalie Bill Ranford and Hyack Football founder Farhan Lalji are among the residents who have signed the petition.
“Why stop at 500?” Fontaine told the Record. “If nothing else, the emails I have been getting from people and the comments – people are saying it’s about time we are having this discussion and it’s a good time to have it.”
In July 2013, New Westminster city council adopted the Queen’s Park Master Plan, which included a goal of developing a new ice sheet next to Queen’s Park Arena. The project, which had an estimated budget of $10 million, had a timeline of 10 years or longer, but the design was projected to be done in a six- to 10-year timeframe.
“I do know it’s on a radar,” Fontaine said. “For me, the time horizons on these are very long. I get that there’s a lot of priorities, but I think that the collapse of the Arenex and the potential to rebuild offers us an opportunity to, perhaps, accelerate that process of looking at a third sheet of ice. It may just not be a third sheet of ice. I have heard from a number of people in the community that think if we just built a third sheet of ice that may not be quite what the community needs.”
