Rob Mackay said he had ‘just found out’ that Beachburg arena would be not in operation, due to the damage to its ammonia pipes that prevented the production of ice, and asked how long Council knew about it and why he was just hearing about it.
Dave Mackay pointed out the arena hadn’t been used in two years for hockey since COVID-19, and that it was a seven year old building, but said that he had a plan to use natural ice, that he put to Council in previous months.
Mike Moore said that they’d first gotten the report on the arena’s condition in June, and then did not meet for the summer.
“No one wants to see the building closed.” he said.
Chris Olmstead said that the problems that cropped up during the engineering assessment compounded.
“As soon as you have an engineer in the building, they start to engineer the whole building.” he said.
“The elephant in the room is that we need a long term solution to recreation, period.” he said, saying the Township took ownership out of necessity to keep the arena. “The [Recreation] Association couldn’t take care of these buildings.”
He mentioned the Township took ownership to preserve the building.
“There’s misconceptions that we wanted to take over.” Olmstead said. “Five or six years ago the Cobden Recreational Committee folded, and the Township had to get involved.”
“One of the biggest issues is volunteers.
