WESTLOCK – Jubilee Arena’s date with the wrecking ball is now slated for the end of this month, although the contractor responsible for its demolition has until the end of November to finish the job.
Town of Westlock CAO Simone Wiley confirmed via e-mail Oct. 4 that the new, tentative start date for demolition of the 59-year-old facility is Oct. 24, although the job has an end-date of Nov. 30 — previously town officials had pegged the weeks of Sept. 12 and Sept. 19 for the next phase of the $280,000 demolition as the interior has been stripped.
Wiley added that they aren’t “overly concerned with the delay from the original proposed timeline as it has no impact on the town’s operations.”
Demolition of the town’s first indoor arena was initially budgeted to cost $1 million and funded via unrestricted reserves in the municipality’s 2022 capital budget, although Wiley said previously there will be additional costs to level and landscape the site in 2023. At town council’s Sept. 12 meeting, operations director Robin Benoit said concrete from the arena will be recycled at the local Lafarge Canada site for free while the contractor has given them a credit back on the metal that can be scavenged.
Jubilee Arena, which was initially called the Westlock and District Jubilee Family Recreation Centre, opened July 13, 1963, and cost $75,744 to build, while the first hockey game at the facility, played on natural ice as it didn’t yet have an ice plant, was Dec. 29, 1963.
Jubilee Arena was supposed to fall following the opening of the Rotary Spirit Centre (RSC) in 2012, but those plans were shelved following the discovery of asbestos — a report from that year stated that 16 of 26 building-material samples tested positive for the substance.
In late 2018, the council of the day talked about demolishing the building and briefly considered renovating it for use as a warm-storage facility. But when faced with a $1 million price tag for that work, or $900,000 to bulldoze it, council put the issue on the backburner.
