The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Team asked to vacate home locker room
The City of Mentor asked the Mentor high school hockey team to vacate its home locker room at Mentor Civic Arena.
The process started May 9 with a letter from the city to the school district and continued at a July 3 city council meeting.
In the letter to Cardinals athletic director Jeff Cassella, Mentor parks and recreation director Kenn Kaminski initiated the exit request. The letter was obtained July 3 by The News-Herald. In the letter, Kaminski cited rink enhancements and participation uptick, then explained the city’s locker room stance:
“Today, we are challenged with maximizing the flexibility of our space to accommodate the needs of our expanded programming and future capital projects,” Kaminski wrote. “The improvements that we have made, including the replacement of the West chiller system, has resulted in an increased need for available storage space for chemicals and other supplies and equipment. As a result, the permanent storage room that you currently (have) within our facility will no longer be available to you after June 1 of this year. The Arena will set up a system for all the high schools that use our facilities to use the lockers (red ones) daily.
“We’ve never been approached with any sort of a waiver — any sort of a lease. This has just come up out of nowhere after 24 years.” — Michele Heller, Mentor Blueline Club president “We believe that accommodations have been made, and if they’re not adequate, we’ll work on that.” — Mentor City Manager Kenneth J. Filipiak
“Please make arrangements to have all equipment removed prior to June 1. Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.”
Michele Heller, president of the Mentor Blueline Club that serves as the organizational wing for the team, said they were “blindsided” by the request.
Heller said Cassella received the letter in midMay, and the Blueline Club received the letter May 23.
“We’ve had correspondence trying to figure out what’s going on — was there an alternative place that they could use?” Heller said. “Could we come up with other solutions? And what consistently came back to us was that it was city property and the city could do what they wanted to do and we didn’t have any rights to that space.”
July 3, in a city council meeting, Mentor City Manager Kenneth J. Filipiak said he met with Superintendent William Porter and Cassella last week and, “They understand the decision.”
In a statement to The News-Herald, Mentor director of community relations Kristen Kirby wrote, “We certainly appreciate our partnership with the City of Mentor and the many years our Mentor High School hockey student-athletes have called the Mentor Ice Arena home.
“At the same time, our volunteer parent booster groups are vital to the success of our athletic programs and we understand the Blue Line Club’s perspective. We remain hopeful that together we can find a solution that works for all parties involved.”
The locker room has been in existence since 1993 and has since been upgraded. According to the Blueline Club, thenMentor coach Jack Smeltz petitioned the city for permission to build a locker room. The building permit was granted for the locker room to be built off the back of the arena. Heller said “to our surprise” when the permit was accessed, it had been issued to the city and not to the club.
“On Oct. 29, 1993, the City of Mentor granted a permit to ‘construct an accessory structure,’ which included pouring of footers and laying of block, which was done by coaches, players, parents, grandparents and benefactors,” the Blueline Club explained in a release on the matter.
The club stated all costs were funded by the team and private donations, with construction commencing, the footers being inspected Nov. 9, 1993, and the locker room being finished by the end of the 1993-94 season.
In 2014, the locker room was upgraded with a new electrical box and permanent flooring for $2,700, which the club said it funded entirely itself.
“We’ve never been approached with any sort of a waiver — any sort of a lease,” Heller said. “This has just come up out of nowhere after 24 years.”
She added the team has moved its equipment out of the locker room, but the stalls and permanent fixtures remain. The team’s skate sharpener is now in Cardinals coach Paul McKito’s garage. Heller added a request was made to build bins on-site for storage, “but that hasn’t happened.”
Mentor Civic Arena has two sheets of ice — the main West rink and a secondary East rink — and locker room space in both rinks, not including Mentor’s locker room, which is built off the West rink. In addition to Mentor, Lake Catholic and NDCL also call the rink home at the high school level, along with the Team Audi of Mentor club and youth hockey and figure skating programs.
July 3, around 40 Mentor players, parents and alumni filled a city council meeting, seeking clarity on the issue.
“We certainly appreciate everyone’s concern here,” Filipiak said. “We believe that accommodations have been made, and if they’re not adequate, we’ll work on that. But the space has been provided, and quite frankly, it bothers me a little bit to know that the commitment of the city to this hockey program is being called into question.
“So just some reminders: Over the 30 years that we’ve conducted high school hockey out there, the city — if you look at today’s dollar terms — the city would have offset the cost of ice time, practice time, game time by the tune of about a halfmillion dollars in today’s terms.”
Filipiak said the rink has operated at a net loss averaging $400,000 a year over the last 10-15 years and pointed out the city does not take gate profits from the teams that use the rink.
“It’s certainly fair to say that without the city’s willingness to sustain that loss, there wouldn’t be any programs out there — high school programs or any other,” Filipiak said. “We continue to invest in the arena. Everyone in here is aware of some of the improvements we’ve done. They’re not inexpensive.
“So I think our commitment is fairly strong out there. With council’s willingness, it will remain. But at the end of the day, it’s still our responsibility to manage city facilities for the benefit of all users there.”
Heller remains hopeful of finding what the club would deem a more equitable solution through continued dialogue with the city.
“We’re not giving up — that much I know,” Heller said.