A Northeast Kingdom group hopes to save Lyndon’s ice arena — the only indoor rink within about an hour’s drive, they say — after a rough financial year during the pandemic.
Rescue Ice Hockey in the Northeast Kingdom formed as a nonprofit in April and launched a GoFundMe on Monday for its effort to reopen Fenton Chester Arena.
“If you want to grow hockey and not see it end this season, it’s really critical,” Eli Emerson, one member of the three-man group, said Friday. “Getting the rink open this season is the first and most fundamental step.”
The nonprofit — RINK Inc., for short — had raised more than a tenth of its $35,000 goal by Friday.
The ice at Fenton Chester Arena has been closed since last October. Operator Lyndon Institute pinned the decision on the “unpalatable” financial implications of opening the already unprofitable, town-owned rink as Covid-19 restrictions stayed firm, according to the Caledonian Record.
The school’s five-year contract with the town to operate the rink ends in August, and it doesn’t plan to renew it.
Emerson said the rescue group started as a way to fund necessary repairs and maintenance for the rink to reopen this season. Compressors and chillers need work, he said, along with the Zamboni and roof.
But when the group learned Lyndon Institute would be out as the rink’s manager, they decided to see if they could take the ship over, too.
Town officials “want an operator; they want somebody in there,” said Rep. Scott Beck, R-St. Johnsbury, a member of the group.
Beck, Emerson and the third member, Andrew McGregor, all came to the project as hockey enthusiasts. Beck and Emerson are board members of the Lyndon Area Youth Hockey Association, which feeds high school programs at Lyndon Institute and St. Johnsbury Academy. Beck’s three sons played hockey at the rink.
With uncertainty surrounding the rink last year, the youth hockey program lost “a good chunk of people,” Emerson said.
Families decided to enroll kids in other associations — an inconvenience, he said, since the nearest rinks are about an hour’s drive.
The players who stuck around last season, including his son, ended up using a rink in Jay, he said. But that was a stressful workaround and wouldn’t be feasible long term. And if youth hockey numbers drop, it could hurt the high schools down the line.
“If you lose the youth hockey program, which you’re almost guaranteed to do if you don’t open the rink this year … you can’t expect in three or four years for there to be any players for the high school teams,” Emerson said.
The $35,000 sought on GoFundMe would fund most of the maintenance and labor needed to get the rink open, he said.
But the group is also looking for up to $100,000 to improve energy efficiency, extend the life of the 41-year-old rink and pay off past deficits, he and Beck said.
“We want to grow the skating culture, which means we want to sell more ice time and do all these things, but we need to know we can cover that annual deficit,” Beck said, adding that he’s confident the group can reach its online fundraising goal.
The group has talked with the Lyndon Selectboard and plans to do so again at its next meeting. Emerson said town officials seem supportive of working out a new management agreement.
If all goes as planned, the group wants to bring back lost figure skating and class programs as new features, Beck said, though the rink will fundamentally stay the same.
“It’s still one sheet of ice,” he said, laughing. But for Caledonia County, it’s an important one.
