After two years of hard planning and negotiations with the town the Innisfail Eagles have finally secured their treasured nest.
And while the senior AA men's hockey team will finally have its special Arena space, including a professional dressing room, the new facility, which will be built at a total cost of about $370,000, will also be available for the community to use during the Eagles' off-season.
“The biggest thing for me is that this is not just for the Eagles, it is for the whole community,” said Brian Sutter, the Eagles' head coach and a club director. “We will use it for part of the year and the rest of the community will use it for the rest of the year.”
Following a proposal by the Eagles last month, the town and the hockey team reached a deal, formally approved by town council on Aug. 22, to develop a large professional-style dressing and meeting room facility out of the existing office and meeting space now occupied by the Innisfail Minor Hockey Association.
The plan is to connect this space with a new 20-foot by 45-foot addition along the west side of the Arena that will house a trainer's room, coach's office, team storage space and an area for players to meet and greet family members. The addition will also have its own exterior entrance to give team players and officials access when they return from evening road trips.
“It is a huge amenity that is so beneficial to us as a hockey club, and for the town in drawing players to come and play,” said Sutter. “It is a big drawing card to have a dressing room that the players can leave their equipment. We get guys coming from all over the country to play, and it's a big drawing card.”
The town approved the expenditure of $195,000 to build the shell of the new addition, while the Eagles will be responsible for the cost of flooring and all furnishings. The hockey team will also be responsible for all costs to convert the existing office and meeting space to a new dressing room. Officials with the hockey team estimate its share of the cost will be about $170,000, which they will have to fundraise or rely on in-kind contracting services.
Officials for the hockey team said construction and upgrades will begin immediately with a hope to have everything completed before the end of the 2016-17 Eagles hockey season.
“We are going to get a nice addition that we will bill for ($195,000) and they (Eagles) will spend about $170,000 to $180,000 finishing the inside, and the end product will belong to us and we will lease it back to the Eagles,” said Mayor Brian Spiller, of the deal which calls for a new lease agreement with the Eagles. “The Eagles have said they will allow minor football, minor ball and other groups to use the facility in the off-season when they are not using it. The Eagles will just move their equipment into their equipment rooms and lock it up and allow the dressing room to be used by other groups.”
In the meantime, the Eagles hockey team, which is aiming to have Innisfail chosen as the site for the weeklong national Allan Cup tournament in 2019, has already begun to aggressively fundraise to pay for its share of the project cost.
“We got some lined up to get this going. It is not going to take long because there are a lot of people that want to help out,” said Sutter. “We have to raise some money now to pay for this, and we are going to do it right. We are not just going to build it. We want a first-class facility and something the town is going to be proud of and something the town can use.”
For any citizen or group that wants to talk to the Eagles about their fundraising drive for the new Arena dressing room and addition, he or she can contact club director Vern Loughlean at 403-304-5051 or Sutter at 403-505-7073.
Brian Sutter, Eagles head coach and club director
"The biggest thing for me is that this is not just for the Eagles, it is for the whole community. We will use it for part of the year and the rest of the community will use it for the rest of the year."
