Standing room only due to COVID-19
Seat bottoms removed to ensure physical distancing at Seymour-hannah four-pad
“There’s nothing to see here.”
To ensure that would be the case — and that the limited number of spectators to minor hockey games would move to a designated area would physically distance — panes of plexiglass were covered with white paper at Seymour-hannah Sports and Entertainment Centre.
“The glass was covered to prevent people from gathering in an area that was in a common area,” said Phil Cristi, director of community, recreation and culture for the City of St. Catharines.
Designated areas for spectators also reduced the time needed for cleaning after each rental, “thus having more ice time available.”
“It is important to note that during the yellow, orange and red stages, the demand for ice still exceeded our available supply of ice,” he said.
Workers at the four-pad on St. Paul Street West also removed the bottoms of the plastic seats in areas designated for spectators permitted for each ice surface.
Cristi, responding to a complaint from a reader that removing the seat bottoms was costly and unnecessary, justified the restrictions given the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim, he said, was to “drive people away from that area — because they will tend to congregate in that space — and then move them to the designated area.”
“We can track people coming in. It was just an effort on our part to avoid people from congregating in a specific area because it impacts the flow of traffic, capacities, all those kinds of things.
“Our efforts were in direct response to the ever-changing nature of the pandemic and the resulting requirements of facility operators.”
Designated viewing areas were designed to accommodate the maximum number of parents at “any given time.”
“Removing the seats prevented people from being able to gather in close proximity,” Cristi said. “If we left the seats in, we wouldn’t have been able to prevent people from sitting in close proximity.
A maximum of 50 people — 25 on the ice, 25 spectators — were permitted at each of Seymour-hannah’s rinks under return-to-play protocols when the region was designated in the orange zone.
“Effectively, 50 per arena. We designated areas for viewing for each
“Moving forward, we will certainly look at ways to make better use of the space while still providing seating options.”
PHIL CRISTI CITY OF ST. CATHARINES COMMUNITY, RECREATION AND CULTURE DIRECTOR
arena,” Cristi said. “If we didn’t do that, people would just go to their favourite spot or whatever.”
This was especially the case for the hallway separating rinks 2 and
3.
“Those two rinks share the hallway. Because it’s an open spot, you could, for example, gather in that spot,” he said.
Before Ontario went into a lockdown and, then, a 28-day state of emergency, keeping people out of the common area between the rinks also factored in scheduling ice time.
“If you look at Seymour-hannah, rinks 2 and 3 are on the same side,” Cristi said. “We were only operating 3 and then that group was done, we would bring the next group into
2. “You couldn’t really watch games on either side any way, but we were just trying to avoid the congregation in that spot, for whichever rental you were at.”
Removing the seat bottoms required people to stand for up to an hour to watch a child or a grandchild playing a 3-on-3 game on the ice.
Cristi said given the fast-changing nature of the pandemic, staff at the arena had to make adjustments as restrictions eased when Niagara moved from zone to zone.
“We went from having no parents allowed to having parents allowed, one parent per child, families sometimes coming in wanting to bring in more than one parent,” he said. “We were dealing with things as best as we could, given the environment that we were dealt with.
“Knowing what we know now, certainly we can take a look at that and what we can do in the future and maybe do things a little differently.
“Moving forward, we will certainly look at ways to make better use of the space while still providing seating options.”
In a letter to the St. Catharines Standard, Phil Baranoski questioned the necessity of removing the plastic bottoms of the seats.
“How many man-hours did it take? How many man-hours will it take to put them back?” he wrote. “How many seat bottoms would be wrecked in stripping the non-reinforced holes using a power screwdriver drill?”
Baranoski suggested rather than promoting physical distances, the designated areas did the opposite.
“The parents and grandparents complained with COVID-19 safety precautions that they could not properly social distance because the rink viewing areas were covered by white paper,” he said.
“Also, there was nowhere to sit in the Seymour-hannah building for seniors and those with handicap disabilities who cannot stand for an hour game like the other arenas have available.”
He pointed out seating was permitted at Merritton Arena as well as Gale Centre in Niagara Falls.
Spectator areas, benches and change rooms were not available and spectators were not allowed when the facility reopened on Aug. 22. At the time, a maximum of 25 participants was allowed on any rink and all visitors were required to wearing masking in off-ice areas.