Like many in the Trinity Bay community, they’re anxious to find out when they can lace up their skates and give the new outdoor rink a whirl.
Members of the Old Perlican Recreation Arena Committee will be happy to get a few weeks of skating this winter. Ultimately, they’re amazed to be so far along with the project only two years removed from forming the committee.
“When we started out with this, we forecasted to get where we are here now on a four-year plan,” explained Cliff Morgan, one of the committee members. “We’ve done it in two years.”
An outdoor rink is far from a foreign concept when it comes to the community’s past. But none of those will touch what the new one — located next to the John Hoskins Community Centre — has to offer.
It’s a 155-feet by 75-feet playing surface.
“These kids down here have nothing,” committee member Darren Noonan told The Compass last week. “We had a little pond in there we used to skate on, but when we decided to go to council, there were 52 kids on a pond about a quarter the size of this.”
Noonan and fellow resident Corey Squires met with council, and from that meeting the committee was born.
According to Morgan’s estimate, approximately $150,000 has gone into creating the rink. A lot of that work wouldn’t necessarily be visible. Excavators dug five feet below the surface and replaced the fill with blasted rock and shale.