WESTLOCK - Close to 59 years after it hosted its first hockey game, and a decade since the public last set foot in it, Jubilee Arena will finally meet the wrecking ball in September.
Town of Westlock CAO Simone Wiley confirmed Aug. 18 they’ve accepted a $280,000 bid to tear down the community’s first indoor arena, which has been closed to the public since the opening of the Rotary Spirit Centre (RSC) in 2012 and has since served as a cold-storage facility for a fleet of old emergency vehicles and other equipment.
Initially budgeted to cost $1 million and funded via unrestricted reserves in the town’s 2022 capital budget, Wiley called the low demolition price a “definite good news story.” That said, she admits there will be additional costs above the $280K to level and then landscape the site in 2023.
“There’s going to be a big hole left behind so we’re going to have to pay to put aggregate in, or something else to fill it up. And we’re going to carry that project over to be able to pave that portion in the future because the ground will need to bounce back and settle once the building is down,” said Wiley, adding those costs are yet to be determined.
Wiley said the contractor started removing hazardous materials from the building last week, a process that will take a couple of weeks until the next phase of demolition begins.
“Then the roof will come off and the building will be collapsed in on itself, basically. I think we have a project completion date of Sept. 29, but the building will be coming down very soon,” she added.
The last 10 years
Jubilee Arena was supposed to be razed following the opening of the RSC, but those plans were shelved following the discovery of asbestos — a 2012 report stated that 16 of 26 building-material samples tested positive for the substance.
That same year then-mayor Bruce Lennon said they had budgeted $200,000-$300,000 for the demo, a figure that didn’t include dealing with asbestos, so it was left standing.
Council then talked about demolishing the building in late 2018 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 simply demolish it, council ended debate and put the issue on the backburner.
A quick history lesson
According to back issues of the Westlock News, 1,500 people attended the official grand opening of the Westlock and District Jubilee Family Recreation Centre on July 13, 1963.
The arena, which cost $75,744 to build, was one of a handful of major builds in the community from 1962-1964 and includes the current county administration building, the auxiliary hospital and St. Mary School. Work on Jubilee started in late 1962 when the structural concrete was poured and then allowed to cure over the winter.
The first hockey game at the rink was played on natural ice and was held Dec. 29, 1963. That night the Westlock Generals, the community’s first senior hockey team in a decade, lost 17-6 to the St. Albert Comets in a Sturgeon Hockey League tilt. In the years following that game an artificial ice plant was added, as well as additional dressing rooms on the east side of the building.
An ad in the Nov. 7, 1962, Westlock News said the facility would be paid for by a provincial government recreation grant of $20,000, a federal government winter-works grant of $21,000 and community fundraising — by 1964 a little over $35,000 had been raised via local donations.
A Nov. 3, 1964, plebiscite proposed a second phase for Jubilee which would have seen the addition of an 84-by-42-foot heated outdoor pool, plus a two-storey, 220-by-24-foot addition to the west side of the building. That plebiscite failed by 11.8 per cent as only 54.8 per cent of residents voted ‘yes’ which was under the 66 per cent bar — if it would have passed the town would have debentured $90,000 over 20 years to fund it. In total, just under 67 per cent of the eligible voters of the day, 590 residents, cast a ballot.
