WESTLOCK – Three weeks short of the anniversary of the first hockey game ever played at Jubilee Arena on Dec. 29, 1963, final demolition of the facility started Dec. 8 as a section of the southwest wall came crashing to the ground.
Demolition crews began the last stage of razing the 59-year-old facility Thursday morning, a job that had been expected to be done in the early fall but has been pushed back numerous times, with the most recent delay coming in early November after crews found more asbestos in the building that Town of Westlock operations director Robin Benoit said previously didn’t get picked up in the original report “when they started pulling the bleachers out” and from behind a wall. Asbestos is a naturally-occurring fibrous silicate mineral commonly used as a building material until its adverse effects on human health were widely acknowledged in 1970s — the most common diseases associated with chronic exposure to it are asbestosis, the scarring of the lungs due to asbestos inhalation, and mesothelioma, a type of cancer.
On site Dec. 8 just after 12 p.m. as demolition workers were inside Jubilee, Benoit chuckled when asked if it was gratifying that work had finally begun.
“It’s just nice to see it started. We’ve been waiting for a while and we’re at the mercy of the contractor’s schedule and they have until the end of the month to get the job done,” said Benoit, who admitted it is a little sad to see the old arena finally fall.
Town officials had been hopeful that following the erection of a security fence around the site the week of Oct. 31 that the arena would fall shortly after. Previously, the town had first pegged the week of Sept. 12 and then the week of Sept. 19 for the final phase of the $280,000 demolition as the interior had been previously stripped. As for the additional cost to do the asbestos abatement, Benoit told town councillors in mid-November it could be as high as $50,000 as crews were working off a previous town-commissioned report.
Looking forward, Benoit said once the site it cleared of rubble, they’ll need to let it sit for a while before it gets levelled and paved.
“The ground will actually rebound a bit after we remove the building. And then by later in the year we’ll have it as a paved parking lot,” he said.
Project history
Demolition of the town’s first indoor arena was initially budgeted at $1 million and funded via unrestricted reserves in the municipality’s 2022 capital budget — CAO Simone Wiley has stated previously there will be additional costs to level and landscape the site in 2023.
Benoit has also said previously that concrete from the arena will be recycled at the local Lafarge Canada site for free and the contractor has given them a credit back on the metal that can be scavenged.
Wiley said Nov. 15 that while they’re disappointed the demo has been continually delayed throughout the fall, along with the revelation of more asbestos on site, they’re content that final bill will be “substantially lower” than what was originally estimated.
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.
The arena was expected to come down following the opening of the Rotary Spirit Centre (RSC) in 2012, but those plans were shelved following the discovery of asbestos at the site — 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 just to bulldoze it, council put the issue on the backburner.
