A new study received in June by the Municipality of Shawville recommends almost $17 million in repairs and upgrades to the town’s arena, including work to the ice system the council says it needs to prioritize just to keep the facility operational.
This spring, faced with increased operational costs caused by old infrastructure and sometimes failing machinery, the municipality hired Ottawa engineering firm J.L. Richards & Associates, Ltd. to get a better picture of the cost of repairing the current arena versus building a new one.
The municipality will be hosting a meeting at the Shawville RA on Thursday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. to discuss the report.
The report was paid for using FRR component 4 funding, approved in fall 2023. The grant gave the municipality 90 per cent of the cost of the report, or $88,902 from the MRC Pontiac.
Shawville mayor Bill McCleary said about two years ago, Cimco, the company responsible for maintenance of the ice plant, said about $3.5 million in repairs were needed to the arena floor because the pipes that carry coolant under the ice surface were leaking.
McCleary said this was part of the reason why the municipality began to explore the option of repairing the arena versus building a new one.
“We just wanted a ballpark price. So as soon as I heard three and a half million, [I said] ‘Well, okay, how much more would it take to fix it? And how much would it cost to build new?” McCleary said.
According to the preliminary study the municipality received in June, which was based solely on a visual inspection of the arena, the cost of replacing the arena’s floor, boards, and all components of the refrigerant system would be more like $5 million.
Shawville councillor Richard Armitage said the ice system is the priority since it is required just to keep the arena functional. “If [it] goes down just shut the key off,” he said.
McCleary said if the floor goes unfixed, the brine leaks will cause holes in the cement that have to be filled with chemical sealant. “You have two years max that you have to do something,” he said.
The Pontiac Arena Fund committee has been working to raise money for some of the repairs to the arena since the committee’s inception earlier this year. The committee has already raised in excess of $100,000 for the arena, which will go toward paying for repairs to the ice plant.
But the ice system and floor repairs are only a portion of what the study says would be needed to bring the arena building up to code. Several other items in the arena were revealed to be not up to current building or fire codes, and the study recommends actions to fix them.
Recommendations include a complete rebuilding of the Lions Hall, which is constructed with wood joists and plywood and is therefore considered a fire hazard non-compliant with building code requirements; rebuilding the wooden bleachers using non-combustible materials; and making various areas of the arena more wheelchair accessible, including the washrooms, the arena seating area, and the whole second floor, which is currently only accessible by staircase.
Some of the items recommended in the report have already been addressed, such as repairs needed to the exterior walls of the arena, which had visible holes in them. This work, completed earlier this summer, was paid for jointly by the Pontiac Agricultural Society and the municipality’s rent contribution.
McCleary said the report gives the municipality what it needs to begin considering options for the future, including which items to address first, noting the municipality is not able to address all the code items right away because the ice system is what needs the most urgent repairs.
He said the arena gets visits from building inspectors several times a year, and if something is not up to code it is addressed.
“If something comes up, we address it,” he said, adding that codes change and the building was up to code when it was constructed in the ‘60s, but that major renovations would be needed to keep up with the most current building codes.
“You get into issues when you start one thing, then this is not up to code now [ . . . ] that’s the snowball effect,” said McCleary.
An alternative to doing these repairs is to build a new arena from scratch.
He said the municipality received an estimate from a preliminary study to build a new arena at $22 million, but he said it would be too small to suit the arena users’ needs.
“It would just be a bare-bones thing to practice and have maybe 100 people watch [ . . . ] $30 million might be closer to what we need,” he offered as an estimate because the municipality has not gone ahead with studies exploring the cost of a new arena.
He said grants are available if the municipality were to build new, but it has not heard back from its provincial liaison in the municipal affairs ministry on how much it could receive in grants and how much it would have to contribute itself.
More details would need to be collected by the firm in order to complete a fuller study of the arena.
Arena running $177K deficit
As the municipality considers the long-term future of the arena, increased maintenance required to the ice plant has left the municipality struggling with operational deficits.
The building that houses the arena is owned by the PAS. The municipality pays the society $25,000 in rent to use it, a number that increased this year from the $2,100/year it had paid for many years prior. According to the lease agreement, the municipality is responsible for the cost of repairs and maintenance to the mechanical aspects of the building, including the ice system.
The municipality has seen increased costs in recent years for the maintenance of the ice system. Last year, the arena ran a $177,236.16 deficit, with more money than ever going toward the repair and hydro costs of the system. The municipality brought in maintenance workers three separate times to fix issues related to the system.
“It gets more expensive every year,” said Armitage, adding that the deficit went up $50K in only four years.
“Now with the deficits in the hundreds, it’s just not feasible anymore,” said McCleary.
He said the council has been looking at ways to make up that deficit. Currently, Shawville ratepayers are paying a portion of their tax bill toward it. “Everyone
[ . . . ] is paying $215.88 off their tax bill,” he said.
On top of taxpayer contributions, each non-Shawville user of the arena pays an annual user fee. Last year, the municipality increased the fee from $150 to $250 – and McCleary said it may have to consider another increase this year.
“We had more repairs than normal because the plant is aging, but we didn’t really know what to budget or what to ask for a user fee. We were hoping it would cover, but it didn’t,” said McCleary.
To fully eliminate the deficit through user-based contributions alone, each of the arena’s 301 minor hockey and figure skating users would need to contribute $588. But Armitage said that is a highly unlikely scenario.
“It’s just not feasible to think that we’re going to recover that deficit all through increased user fees. The numbers of children going out on that ice will drop substantially,” Armitage said.
Last year, across minor hockey and figure skating the arena had 118 arena users from the Municipality of Pontiac, 68 from Shawville, 49 from Clarendon, 33 from Bristol, while several other municipalities had less than 10. By this usage distribution, Shawville’s share of the total deficit is $39,984.
Armitage and McCleary said they are hoping other municipalities will step up to pay into the use of the arena. This could either come through payments to cover the user fees for each municipality’s users, or via a partnership agreement where the parties split costs associated with arena operations.
“We can no longer continue to fund the whole deficit as one municipality,” said Armitage. “We’re hopeful that parents will go to their respective councils and say, ‘Look, you guys have to step up a bit.’”
McCleary said there are other things council can do to try and increase the arena’s revenue, including increased hours for the canteen and more valuable advertising.
“We need to look at fundraising, we need to look at maybe cutting some expenses, we need to look at bringing partners in to help us manage the arena itself,” he said.
Meeting on the arena’s future
McCleary said the municipality will be holding a meeting on Sept. 18 at the Shawville RA building to hear the public’s opinion on the future of the arena.
“What does the public want? Does the public want us to fix what we have? Does the public want new?” he said of the meeting’s goal.
PAS president Ralph Lang told THE EQUITY he is opposed to the construction of a new arena, and believes the municipality should not seek grants for the work because he believes it can be done for less money than the $17 million listed on the report. Lang said he will attend Thursday’s meeting to contest the idea of a new arena.
“I’m disappointed we have not had discussions about this study that came out in June. We have not received a copy nor were we invited personally to the public hearing,” he said.
McCleary said there is no current plan to build a new arena, but there could be some long-term financial benefits to doing so.
“With newer equipment, the maintenance costs aren’t as high, the energy costs aren’t as high, so there will be some savings hopefully in the operations, but a how-many-year payback?” he said.
Armitage said the goal of the exercise is to make sure the municipality can continue operating an arena for its current and future users.
“My worst nightmare since I came on council and realized the shape of this arena that it’s in, is that the first of February it goes down. And figure skating’s halfway through the seasons, minor hockey’s halfway through the season, what do those kids do?” he said.
With the municipal election nomination period opening this week, Armitage said not much traction can be made for now on whichever route the municipality decides to take.
“It would depend on the next council’s thought on which one of those options they’re going to go with,” said Armitage.
The full report is available on the Municipality of Shawville’s website by following the link here.
Correction: Sept. 19, 2025: This article previously incorrectly reported that before the annual rent paid by the Municipality of Shawville to the Pontiac Agricultural Society was hiked to $25,000 a year in 2025, Shawville paid $1,000 a year. In fact, the annual rent paid in the previous 10-year lease agreement was $2,100 a year.
Further, it reported Shawville councillor Richard Armitage to be chair of the municipality’s arena committee, when in fact councillor Julien Gagnon fills this position.
