Peduto, Penguins exec. tour armory
Rink planned for ex-military facility
Mayor Bill Peduto said he could “almost hear the sticks” — hockey sticks, that is — last week as he toured the historic Alfred E. Hunt Armory in Shadyside, where a long-touted indoor ice rink could become reality as soon as next year pending additional funding, he said.
Mr. Peduto and two contractors looked around the cavernous space, as his former Chief of Staff Kevin Acklin, now senior vice president of the Pittsburgh Penguins, flipped through a book of designs showing the 93,671-square-foot building transformed into two levels.
The plan is to have roughly 100 to 115 parking spaces on the ground floor with retail space facing Emerson Street, full-size and smaller training ice rinks on the second floor, and 24,000 square feet of office space.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority is on track to close the $1.8 million purchase of the former military facility from the state by year’s end, Mr. Peduto said.
“The big reason that we’re here today, though, is there’s still a gap in the financing,” Mr. Peduto said Thursday. “We’ve leveraged the state money that we can. We’ve leveraged historic tax credits, we are investing URA dollars, and at this point we have to find ways to reduce the cost of construction and development. Without those cuts, the project will be stalled and delayed another year.”
The more than $32 million city-led project is an endeavor involving Mosites Co., as the developer, and the Penguins, who plan to move some of their youth programming to the completed space.
Roughly $3 million to $5 million is still needed to begin construction, Mr. Acklin said.
While no agreements have been signed yet, the Penguins have offered to operate the facility on behalf of the city at cost and “to invest resources from our foundation to provide better access to youth hockey to inner city neighborhoods,” said Mr. Acklin, who previously was URA chairman.
URA officials led two contractors who joined the meeting — Ryan Maxwell, of CJL Engineering, and Ian Bennett, a sales representative from Everything Ice — on a tour through the historic 1.8-acre facility’s maze of hallways, even venturing to a former underground shooting range.
Mr. Bennett said a proposal for ice rink construction has been submitted to the city for review.
Mr. Peduto said with an agreement in place, development could begin in the first quarter of 2020, but also called that timeline “optimistic.”
“We’ve been working for the past few years directly with Mosites Corporation. ... Since the time that Kevin has joined the Penguins, we now have an agreement with the Penguins on the management. They already manage two rinks,” Mr. Peduto said.
“They’re committed in working with the NHL on bringing all the different programs that really apply to allowing hockey to become a part of everyone’s lives, no matter where you live or your income or physical abilities, and making this the center of it for the Pittsburgh region, as well as providing hockey for high schools and universities [and] providing the community with a place they can go skate. Under that model, then the city has taken a larger role in looking at this as an asset.”