News in brief: Roblin Park Community Centre will renovate outdoor rinks

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2020 (2231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The outdoor rinks around Roblin Park Community Centre will be good as new next year.

The centre has received $100,000 from the City of Winnipeg to replace all three of their outdoor skating rinks, as part of their Community Centre Renovation Grant Program (CCRGP).

The funding was awarded in June. The centre announced that work will begin in September 2020. According to Alex Heese, board president of Roblin Park Community Centre, some of their rinks were in dire need of repairs.

“We had been talking for some time already, about injecting some money into our outdoor rinks. Some rinks are worse than others, some of them had broken boards, where kids and adults would bump into (them) and come away with slivers,” Heese said. “It was to a point where we needed to do something.”

The rink next to the centre’s parking lot was in relatively good condition, and the organizers kept up with the repairs so the Oak Park Raiders could use it. Unfortunately, the centre did not have the funds to repair the others, which suffer from broken boards and splinters, among other problems.

According to a news release, the centre gives special thanks to Keri Renouf, a board member who worked on the grant submission.

In fall 2019, the City of Winnipeg changed the eligibility criteria for the grant, allowing centres to apply for money to fix “ UFF-funded permanent outdoor hockey pens.”

This allowed the centre to receive grants to fix the rinks, if approved.

Roblin Park Community Centre is known for its big “Winter Wonderland” event, a fundraiser that occurs in January and February.

For more information, visit roblinpark.org