A group of local businesspeople and hockey enthusiasts have their sights set on building Central Oregon’s first indoor ice rink — and they’re seeking $40 million to do it.
The massive nonprofit fundraising effort was announced July 1 for the Forge Community Iceplex, a year-round facility with two professional-sized ice sheets, a lounge, gym and training facility, pro shop, event spaces and room for about 1,000 spectators located in northeast Bend.
Tyler Brower, a spokesperson for the effort, told the Source the project is about to ink the sale of 7 acres at Juniper Ridge, a swath of greenfield industrial land at the northeast edge of the city using some of the $10 million in donations already in the bank.
Supporters say the facility would satisfy growing communities in hockey and figure skating as the popularity of ice sports surges past what Bend’s current single sheet of open-air ice can handle.
“Ice sports are growing across the Pacific Northwest and communities are investing to keep up,” said Derek Meyer, a board president with the project and owner of a Hixon Mortgage, a mortgage lending company in Bend. “Central Oregon has the demand, the community and now the vision to build something that lasts. Families are scrambling for ice time, programs are turning players away, and The Forge changes that.”
Meyer leads a seven-member board including John Kromm, owner of Kromm Real Estate company, Steve Elwell, a Bend-based business executive and investor, Brower, a former college and pro hockey player, and Scott, Julia and Brandon Lehmann, the founding donors for the Forge center. All have some connection to coaching or playing hockey.
The campaign comes as several other nonprofit groups push to raise millions for new state-of-the-art facilities in Bend, including a $100 million performing arts center and a $1.5 million dedicated curling facility.
Meanwhile, the City of Bend and its tourism agency, Visit Bend, recently examined the possibility of building an arena for sports, conventions and concerts.
While the Forge center is designed to host hockey players and figure skaters of all ages, curling isn’t part of the current concept, Brower said.
For now, Central Oregon’s ice sports headquarters lies at The Pavilion, a single sheet of NHL-sized open-air ice at the corner of Colorado Avenue and Simpson Avenue in the heart of Bend. The venue also hosts activities like roller hockey and youth camps in the summer.
About 2,000 people participate between summer and winter programs at The Pavilion, said Clare Gordon, who manages the facility for the Bend Park & Recreation District. More people each year have started playing ice sports each year since it opened in 2015, she said. The waitlist for adult hockey leagues stretches between 40 and 80 people, many of whom never see the ice.
While ice sports programs are growing, the rate has slowed in recent years, Gordon added.
“There’s many communities like ours that have public and private facilities serving the community,” Gordon told the Source. “I think that if they’re able to fundraise, that indicator of growth is there.”
Park district officials have also thought about building a new indoor ice rink. A feasibility study presented to the district’s board in January examined an indoor rink, an aquatic and fitness center and an athletic center as the district’s next big investments.
The indoor rink contemplated by that study would cost between $26 million and $34 million, with only one sheet of ice likely covered by a prefabricated metal building.
During a presentation in January, Matt Mercer, senior advisor to the park district’s executive director, said it’s possible a new privately developed indoor rink could pull program fee revenues away from The Pavilion, forcing the district to pay more out of pocket to keep the facility running.
“We could find ourselves in a situation where if we’re not part of that new ice rink, we actually end up increasing our subsidy to ice, because we’ve lost demand to the other place,” Mercer said.
He added: “I think the community would benefit by a coordinated programming between the facilities.”
The park district recoups about 80% of the cost of running The Pavilion from program fee revenue, Gordon said.
Brower said his group is “very hopeful” that the park district and others will run programs out of the Forge, but they haven’t discussed specifics with the park district.
“There will be a bottleneck, and when that bottleneck presents itself, the Forge is a great release for that to create opportunity elsewhere,” he said.
A season of adult hockey at The Pavilion costs $350. Brower said programs at the Forge would “not be a huge price jump” from those at The Pavilion and would be comparable to others in the Pacific Northwest.
Founders are confident the facility would bring in enough revenue to sustain operations, even as other rinks in the region face closure, according to the press release. With two sheets of ice, Bend could host a handful of tournaments each year, which the nonprofit campaigns says could bring in 16,000 attendees who would drive $4.4 million in visitor spending.
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