The new Grand Marais hockey rink is done and being flooded so it can be used this winter. The player bench area on the north side of the rink was built off-center to work with the location of existing lighting, but the Cook County Hockey Association subsequently paid to put in more lighting and will be paying to move the bench area to the center of the rink.
The new Grand Marais hockey rink has dasher boards, gates and ice and will be ready for play throughout the winter. On November 27, the county board signed a contract with Becker Arena Products of Savage, Minnesota for installation of the dasher boards.
The contract was for $132,341, but the board approved a change order of $30,053.61 that brought the cost down to $102,287.39. The change order called for not installing elevated wood floors in the player, penalty and timekeeper boxes, changing some of the materials used in the dasher boards, using chain link fencing instead of acrylic shields on the ends and corners of the rink, and not having any fencing or shields on the sides.
About $4,000 in extra cost was included in the change order to pay for a windbreak behind the player boxes and a gate on the northeast side for shoveling snow out of the rink.
Wade Cole of ORB Management, the county’s owner’s representative, told the Cook County News-Herald that the changes were a result of coordination with Becker Arena Products, “a premier hockey rink supplier,” and the Cook County Hockey Association. He said the hockey association offered to purchase and install the elevated wood flooring, saving the county $5,416.36, and install benches the county would be purchasing.
Commissioner Fritz Sobanja told Construction Site Manager Greg Kraning of ORB Management that the Cook County Hockey Association does not like the fact that the player, penalty, and timekeeper boxes (the bench area) are not centered along the side of the rink. Greg Kraning said all of that, along with the gates leading to the various sections, would be moved in the spring.
Wade Cole said the bench area was placed off center because of the location of the existing lighting. The hockey association decided to cover the cost of adding two more electric poles, but the concrete forms for the bench area were already being placed when this happened, so the bench area was installed anyway to allow play over this winter, he said. “The task was to get this installed for this upcoming hockey season!” he said.
Cole said, “On any project, and especially a project of this magnitude, there are items that are missing from the design or missed on a shop drawing or look good on paper but do not work in the field. There are also times when the owner changes their mind after something is installed. For these type of items we have a construction contingency built into the budget which allows us to pay for these out of the budget without increasing the total project cost.” The hockey association will pay to move the bench area.
The hockey rink is one of the projects being funded by the county’s 1 percent recreation and infrastructure sales tax.
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