Keystone Centre boards receive major upgrade

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This article was published 03/12/2020 (1761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Brandon Wheat Kings return to action in 2021, they’ll do it in a much safer Westoba Place.

The facility began tearing out its old boards a couple of months ago, with the installation of a new player-friendly acrylic rink boards system expected to be finished by Sunday.

Keystone Centre general manager and CEO Jeff Schumacher said the unusually long pause in use of the rink provided an ideal window for the job.

“It was good timing,” Schumacher said. “The only good thing with coronavirus is, due to the lack of events, we’ve had all this time to do a lot of project work. This would have been a project that we planned to do in the summer, but because of the league (starting date) push back, we had time and the funding fell just right.”

The exact price can’t be disclosed because it’s proprietary company information, but Schumacher said it ran in the hundreds of thousands. The old boards, which were rigid and didn’t move at all, were 25 or 30 years old.

The new boards have more give to them, allowing some of the impact from big hits to be absorbed, and in theory, to prevent injuries.

Last March, Western Hockey League commissioner Ron Robison said Westoba Place, which anchors the south end of the 540,000-square-foot Keystone Centre, was one of just two buildings in the league that didn’t have the safer boards yet. The other is the Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert, but a new building is in the early stages of development there.

Robison said in March he understood the challenges all facilities face, but added the boards were supposed to be installed before last season.

“We certainly recognize that there are some challenges from time to time and that is why we’ve been having ongoing discussions with the facility in Brandon to understand what other challenges they have,” Robison said.

“At the same time, all facilities were to be in compliance by the start of this season, the 2019-20 season, so we granted a year extension for the acrylic rink board system. Our expectation is that it will be installed prior to next season.”

The new boards put Brandon in complete compliance with three initiatives introduced by the WHL in 2016. The others were better lighting, a high-definition centre-ice scoreboard and video display. 

Wheat Kings general manager Darren Ritchie said it will be nice for his players to have the added protection from the new boards.

“It’s pretty standard around the league,” Ritchie said. “These boards help the game. It’s safer for sure, and it’s going to more than likely help on the injury side. I think everyone is happy that ownership could help the process of getting the boards.”

The new boards were installed on the exact footprint of the old boards, which required removal of some of the existing cement in the two corners on the south end.

The only slight delays were actually because of COVID-19.

“There wasn’t anything that we perceived to be a major issue through the process,” Schumacher said. “We delayed about a week but that was going to red status and shuffling around. It’s pretty much on time.”

Athletica Sports Systems, the company that supplied the boards, provided an employee to supervise Keystone’s operations department during the installation.

Schumacher said the benefits extend beyond the Wheat Kings, and even beyond hockey when the boards have to be removed for other events.

“These are much lighter, easier to change over, safer, which is good for rec hockey and youth as well,” Schumacher said. “It’s all upside.”

The challenge for the Keystone is paying for the expensive job in a year when its revenues have virtually dried up.

The club announced in March the Keystone Centre will add a fee to every Brandon Wheat Kings ticket sold in an effort to help fund capital improvements to Westoba Place.

Adult season ticket holders will pay an extra $1 per game, or $34 per season, while seniors pay an additional $30 and youth an extra $20 for their season tickets. Single-game tickets, which were already tagged with an extra $3 fee by the Keystone Centre, will remain the same, although they will drop to $2 for youth.

The facility didn’t land any specific grants for that project, but was lucky with some other ones.

“It all kind of shuffles around,” Schumacher said. “If we save over here because of a grant for $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, that might allow us to tackle this job sooner. The funding from the province and the city this past year stayed the same. Really in this case specifically, it’s more on the city side.”

Over the last three years, the Keystone Centre has spent nearly $3 million on the south end of the facility, buying a new Zamboni, adding a wall-mounted scoreboard, making improvements to its food and beverage services, enhancing the wireless network and creating a new front entrance. 

The building is among the three oldest facilities in the league.

The Wheat Kings moved into the Keystone Centre 48 years ago in time for their 1972-73 season opener on Oct. 14, 1972. Swift Current’s Credit Union iPlex was built in 1967, while the Art Hauser Centre opened in late 1971.

The next major jobs include roof repairs, fixing the parking lot and adding air conditioning and dehumidification to Westoba Place. The Wheat Kings had their 2016-17 home opener postponed midway through the game when fog made it difficult for players to see.

“It really doesn’t matter how perfect we do everything, sometimes you’re looking at a situation where humidity is way up there,” Schumacher said. “If it rains on top of it and wet bodies are coming, that contributes and then you end up with fog. There’s really no way around it.”

It’s not just a hockey problem.

During the summer months, the building is so warm that the facility isn’t comfortable renting it to some kinds of performances, such as kids’ shows that have performers in costumes.

Regardless, Schumacher said getting the boards completed is a relief and helps cue up the next projects.

“It’s going to be nice because we have plenty of time before the season,” Schumacher said. “There was a point there where we were thinking ‘Wow, it’s going to be a miracle if we can pull this off,’ but with the schedule backing up to January, we were able to pull the trigger.

“Any time we can get these large dollar figure projects down, because they tend to be the ones that hold us back from completing a lot of smaller projects. Between the centre-hung (scoreboard) and this one, that’s a fair amount of funding that we have to shift over there just to get us up to current standards.”

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