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March 29, 2005
Hockey arena to be built
Hamline’s student center will be torn down this May in order to build an Olympic-sized hockey rink.
Hamline, the only MIAC school to still play in the State Fair Coliseum and one of the only schools who doesn’t have their own rink or share a rink with another school, will break ground on the ice arena May 22.
McGough Construction will build the Olympic-sized rink and 6,000-seat capacity ice arena for the university. The projected cost of the facility is $64 million, which will be funded over the course of 10 years by cutting professor pay by 25 percent.
“This is a special moment for Hamline,” said Dan O’Brien, Hamline’s athletics director. “We will have the best facility in all of college hockey, and I couldn’t be more happy about the situation. This arena will help carry Hamline to national title contention in both men’s and women’s hockey.”
Chris Brown, Hamline’s men’s hockey coach, was predictably excited about the announcment.
“I can’t believe I’m this damn lucky to have this happen to me and my team,” he said. “We’ll finally be able to recruit good players, players who can actually score goals, and, oh yeah, play defense.”
Hamline’s sports information director, Troy Mallet, was “giddy” with the news.
“You have no clue how happy I am,” he said. “I froze my ass off every weekend at the Coliseum. That place is colder than Duluth, and that’s hard to come by.”
He indicated he frequently brought an industrial space heater with him to stay warm.
“First I get the Klas Center to cozy up in and report on games, now I get this new stadium,”he said. “I feel like a kid in a candy store.”
Hamline’s new rink will be named the “McGough Construction Memorial Ice Arena.”
The bookstore and all other organizations that use the student center will be required to vacate the building by May 22, when the wrecking ball will crash through the walls at first light.
Hamline has no current plans to construct a student center. Early reports indicate that the student center facilities and offices will be built in the basement of the Drew Science building.
Posted by msveum at March 29, 2005 01:41 PM
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