Arlington could find itself rolling toward a hockey rink this weekend, with the County Board set to vote Saturday on a practice facility for the Washington Capitals.
The Caps’ rink comes to Board members for their Feb. 9 meeting with unanimous approval from the Planning Commission, and what an attorney on the project calls strong community support.
But even if plans for the rink meet board members’ satisfaction, the final OK from Arlington will depend on a plan for financing construction, coming up for board approval at the end of the month.
The Caps rink, a 145,577-square foot facility, would be built on top of the seven-story parking garage at Ballston Common Mall. Plans call for two floors to be added to the structure: the eight story with parking, ice rinks, training and locker rooms, the ninth housing team offices.
The rink level would include nearly 120,000 square feet, with two sheets of ice, training and locker rooms for the Capitals and local high school and amateur sports teams using the facility; a mezzanine-level café snack bars, an arcade, party room and skate rental.
Plans for the facility call for contributions to traffic calming and pedestrian efforts at the site. In addition, the rink will be available for free 500 hours a year, with additional availability going first to local hockey teams.
Those aren’t the only times the rinks will be open to the public, said Timothy Sampson, an attorney working with the Capitals for approval of the project. "The Caps only need this for 500 hours a year," he said. The rest of the time, the rinks would be available to the public, for free or for an admission price.
But there would be no admission price on Capitals’ practices. Plans project 556,000 visitors to the rinks over the course of the years, with 55,000 of those coming to watch free practice sessions.
<b>Projecting Costs</b>
<bt>Costs for the rink were not outlined in the plan, but rink managers and builders said they could range from $2 million to $15 million.
Tom Morris, general manager of the Caps’ current practice rink, in Odenton, Md., though the cost could be on the high end of that range. "To build what we have here now is from $5 to $6 million," he said. "With the Caps, you’re looking at in the $10 million ballpark."
Ron McHargue, president of Ice Builders, a rink construction firm in upstate New York, expected lower costs. "The place they used to practice, that was $3.5 million," he said. "In today’s dollars, they’re going to spend close to $5 million, if it’s state of the art, with training rooms."
Additional seats would not increase costs much, he said, and even the proposal to put the rinks on top of the garage wouldn’t leave costs skyrocketing.
"You lose land costs, but add costs getting to the eighth floor level, and on labor. It wouldn’t cost more than another quarter to a half million, so probably $5.5 million," McHargue said, adding that his company may be bidding on the Caps rink.
The holdup on the project could come at the County Board’s Feb. 23 meeting. Proposals for the Caps practice facility are now based on the county constructing the actual eighth floor of the garage, leasing the space to the Capitals, who would pay for construction of the rink facilities, and the ninth floor. County staff said the move to approve a site plan before funding was finalized is unusual.