The Spruce Kings have raised serious concerns about the City's civic core concept plan

By Tommy Osborne

Downtown Future

“The organization would be dead:” Spruce Kings raise huge concerns over City’s civic core concept plan

Dec 19, 2024 | 5:03 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The City of Prince George’s civic core concept plan has received mixed feedback, as some organizations are applauding the plan, while the Spruce Kings have raised serious concerns. The plan includes building a new Kopar Memorial Arena in the same location as the current one. If this were to happen, where would the team play?

“I’m going to guess that puts us out of an arena to play in for probably three years, if not more,” Spruce Kings General Manager Mike Hawes said.

Would CN Centre or Kin 1 be possible options? Hawes says this is not possible. Regarding the Kin 1, there are many reasons, being:

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• The BCHL requires its teams to play in arenas with minimum 1500 seats. It also requires an arena to have a dedicated dressing room for players, medical space, players’ lounge, storage space, office space, press box, and a broadcast booth.
• Loss of revenue. Whether it’s the loss of concessions, ad revenue, ticket sales, and more, the loss of revenue would be debilitating to the Spruce Kings.
• The Kin 1 is an Olympic sized rink, but the BCHL requires North American regulation sized ice.

“The main things being the amenities that we couldn’t get at Kin 1, and the size of the arena, and then the inability to generate revenue in that building would end in the demise of the franchise,” Hawes said.

While CN Centre would have all of the amenities and the regulation sized ice, Hawes adds this is also not possible, as the WHL and BCHL are competing leagues. While he couldn’t speak for the WHL, he says from the BCHL perspective the team would not be allowed to play in a rink with WHL branding.

“If we were to play in the CN Centre, we need the ice logos, we need the rink boards, we need the advertising within the building, we need the concessions. All that stuff is currently in our lease with the city here at Kopar Memorial Arena. That stuff would not be available to us at the CN Centre if we shared the facility with the Cougars,” Hawes said.

“I’m very disappointed that City Council and their City Councilors didn’t reach out to me or the organization, did not consult with us before making that decision to decide on concept two at the meeting on Monday,” he continued.

While Hawes is very concerned with the plan, there is also a lot of optimism around it for other groups. While no one wants to see the Spruce Kings go, the new performing arts centre would be a huge boost to the fine arts community, and one that many believe is long overdue.

“I’ve been saying to people, we’re kind of a millennial organization because we’re over 50 years old now, but we still live in mom’s basement, so it’d be nice to have our own place,” said the Prince George Symphony Orchestra’s (PGSO) Executive Director Ken Hall.

“Even if you’re not a person who goes to symphony concerts, having these facilities can help attract festivals. It can help attract visitors. It can be good for the community, economically,” Hall continued.

Hall hopes the building can serve all the community’s arts needs, not just the PGSO. Whether it’s things like conventions, theatre, dinner theatre, or more, he’s looking forward to continuing to plan for the building.

“As long as it’s made in a way carefully designed so that it is useful for lots of different people, not just for the symphony. As much as we’d love to have a hall that was made just for us, we’re not a big enough organization to support that. So we need to work with other groups and have a centre that is full all the time,” Hall said.

Because of the potential multi-use functionality of the building, Hall speculates it won’t be just one room, as different events require different acoustics and layouts.

“I like to use the analogy of a stadium, football, soccer, baseball. They’ll take place in a building called a stadium that looks like a stadium and makes sense as a stadium, but they’re different buildings, or at least they have different aspects to them. So you can’t just build a stadium and expect all sports to work in it, right? And that’s the same thing for us. We and the theatre both need a stage, but just about everything else is different, right?” he said.

The civic core concept plan is still in its early stages, and there will be a lot more discussion around it, including public referendums, in the months to come.

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