WESTLOCK – Jubilee Arena’s date with the wrecking ball has been delayed yet again following the discovery of additional asbestos in an interior wall.
Town of Westlock operations director Robin Benoit confirmed in a Nov. 10 e-mail that, “further abatement will need to be done and testing to confirm the clean-up is complete.” He expects this most recent delay will push the demolition of the 59-year-old facility to the last week of November.
Town officials had been hopeful that following the erection of security fence around the site the week of Oct. 31 that the arena would come down shortly after. Previously, town officials had pegged the weeks of Sept. 12 and Sept. 19 for the next phase of the $280,000 demolition as the interior had been stripped.
Demolition of the town’s first indoor arena was initially budgeted to cost $1 million and funded via unrestricted reserves in the municipality’s 2022 capital budget, although CAO Simone Wiley said previously there will be additional costs to level and landscape the site in 2023. At town council’s Sept. 12 meeting, Benoit said concrete from the arena will be recycled at the local Lafarge Canada site for free while the contractor has given them a credit back on the metal that can be scavenged.
Jubilee Arena, which was initially called the Westlock and District Jubilee Family Recreation Centre, opened July 13, 1963, and cost $75,744 to build, while the first hockey game at the facility, played on natural ice as it didn’t yet have an ice plant, was Dec. 29, 1963.
Jubilee Arena was supposed to fall following the opening of the Rotary Spirit Centre (RSC) in 2012, but those plans were shelved following the discovery of asbestos — a report from that year stated that 16 of 26 building-material samples tested positive for the substance.
In late 2018, the council of the day talked about demolishing the building and briefly considered renovating it for use as a warm-storage facility. But when faced with a $1 million price tag for that work, or $900,000 to bulldoze it, council put the issue on the backburner.
