Sept 2009

The old home of the Portage Terriers and other local sports team is to be shut down.

Despite pleas from various minor sports groups, City of Portage la Prairie council decided at their regular meeting Monday to decommission the Portage Centennial Arena (PCA) as an ice arena and consider other uses for it.

“I’m obviously disappointed,” Nancy Brooks, with the Portage Minor Hockey Association said in an interview. “I’m seriously disappointed.”

Brooks was one of four delegations at the meeting to try and convince council to keep at least one sheet of ice open at the PCA as all ice-based minor sports in the city are in dire need of ice time and three sheets would help alleviate that situation.

Brooks presented council with a business plan created by Shane Moffatt to keep the west rink of the PCA open for 17 weeks out of the year with two options, the first costing about $79,000 and the second costing about $70,500.

The plan did acknowledge that to run the rink, the city would have to charge more to user groups but that cost would be evened out by not having to travel as much for games and practices.

The plan even covered how user groups could do much-needed repairs to the ailing PCA.

Mostly, Brooks said, she just wanted council to try and work together with the user groups to come up with some kind of plan for a third ice surface in the city.

“I would’ve liked to see city and community get together,” she said.

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