The Slater Family Ice Arena will have a bit of a newer feel this fall after months-long renovations that
began earlier this week are completed.
Bowling Green is replacing the dasher boards, glass and netting, along with the entire floor and the
majority of the cooling system, which has been in place for nearly all five decades of the building’s
existence.
The project will total approximately $1.3 million and is coming out of the university’s renewal and
replacement reserves, a fund designed to cover facility maintenance costs.
Along with age, the necessity to replace the system below the arena floor comes from a federal mandate
that says R22, the refrigerant used to help keep the ice at temperature, must be phased out by 2020,
according to Jamie Baringer, the assistant athletic director for arena operations.
With R22 on its way out, new compressors will also be needed in the arena, although they will not be
replaced just yet. The university is in the middle of a study to determine further renovation needs for
the facility’s future.
The study, which should be completed this summer, will determine whether or not the arena needs a second
full sheet of ice, among other needs.
“We are choosing not to replace the compressors this year due to the fact that if the space study deems
that we need a second full sheet, we need to make sure that the compressor system that we put in is
suitable for two sheets of ice,” Baringer said.
Construction crews will begin sawing out the cement below the ice as early as today and removing the
glycol and pipes, taking it down to nearly bedrock, Baringer said. About eight miles of new steel pipe
will run the glycol underneath a newly-poured cement slab.
The necessity for the project didn’t come as a surprise. The university knew last summer that an update
was definitely needed in the near future.
“I would say that it’s safe to say that the current system has been around for 45 years,” Baringer said.
The ice arena originally opened in 1967.
Even with the age of the cooling system, the arena never had any issues with the playing surface, but
those issues likely would have risen had the project been put off much longer.
More renovations are certain for the future, but the extent is not known. Scott Slater donated $2 million
to the Bowling Green hockey program late last year, which will likely help fund a portion of future
upgrades.
“We are still working through priority lists of what we would want for day-to-day functionality and then
the game experience functionality,” Baringer said.
The arena is scheduled to reopen on Aug. 21.
