LUSJ and The Buffalo News are reporting on the planning boards recommendation to the city council to approve the special use permit for the Ice Rink to occupy the old Sears/Jubilee building. The permit is necessary for the group to receive the $350,000 state grant which is earmarked for purchasing the building. Unfortunately the site sketch was not available due to illness of the site plan designer.
LUSJ mentioned the project delay that the Buffalo News previously reported as being 6 months:
Final approval of the Dormitory Authority grant is several months behind because the LIASC board of directors didn’t know, until recently, the extent of technical information it needed to provide. Pitrello declined to say Monday if the ice pad can still open in July, given the funding delay.
The Buffalo News mentions that there is a possibility of two rinks being built from the start due to perceived strong ice time demand:
Pitrello said he and Todd Sukdolak, Lockport High School vice principal, who is another board member, have the job of gauging the demand for ice time, which he said is extremely strong.
“If we can justify that, we’ll go right for two [rinks in the building],” Pitrello said.
An interesting fact is that the roof would also need to be raised on the building.
It would be nice if the city could find grant money to turn that portion of Chestnut back into an actual street with sidewalks on both sides and crosswalks at the nearby intersections. Something that would lead patrons of the rink to walk down to Niagara Produce or up Market St. to Main for food, etc and in a round about way to bring back some "urban feel" to a site that is anything but urban or pedestrian friendly after urban "renewal" ripped most of it out.
3 comments:
This will be huge for downtown commerce. Hockey tournaments draw hundreds of out of towners. That means hundreds of weekend room reservations, breakfast, lunch and dinners. Hopefully when there are tournaments the Palace has some kind entertainment for the kids. One thing I hope they keep in mind when building this is to have adequate bleacher seating and concession facilities.
Thanks for the comment TR. Attracting disposible income and trying to make it stick around for a bit should be a focus of all these developments.
I hope in addition to the convienence of the on-site concessions, all involved (arena, city, local buisnesses) work together to inform patrons of the options to walk or drive to in the city/town.
(re-post for typo)
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