Elmira River Sharks home opener delayed, ice plant being replaced at First Arena
ELMIRA, N.Y. (WENY) -- Elmira's First Arena will soon re-open for hockey, after the Chemung County Industrial Development Agency took the arena back over this spring, and the Federal Prospects Hockey League (FPHL) announced a new team. The Chairman of the Chemung Co. IDA said the first home game was delayed because of a problem with the ice plant.
"We had a problem with the ice plant [and] when we went to reactivate the ice plant we had a system problem. There was a power surge and it kind of fried the system," said IDA Chairman, Mark Margeson.
Margeson said the IDA brought in professionals to get advice on how to move forward. The IDA decided to file an insurance claim and a chiller had to be brought in until the new system is up and running.
"We have folks in the facility right now working on transferring the power over to the new chiller. In addition to that, we've also done a lot of work on the arena itself," said Margeson.
Margeson explained new boards have been put up, the rink has been cleaned, painted, the rubber floors replaced, along with some seats replaced, and the boxes for the teams have been fixed.
RELATED: Changes coming to First Arena
Along with clean-up and new paint jobs at First Arena, the former ice practice rink is being turned into a turf field. Margeson said the practice rink is being retrofitted for turf, and could be there all the time, but it will be portable so turf can be brought out to the main rink for larger events.
"The good thing is we'll have opportunities for another group of people other than just hockey and make it a more of a rounded community facility," said Margeson.
While much of the focus of fixing First Arena is on the ice plant, Margeson hopes within the next 30 to 45 days to have the turf laid down in the former practice rink.
"I'm confident that they're doing such a good job that we can get that down (hopefully in the next 30-45 days) and our hope is we'll be able to accommodate folks fairly soon," said Margeson.
The first home game is scheduled for October 21st. People can purchase tickets from the First Arena Box Office or Ticketmaster.