The story of Queensway Rink

Queensway Rink, and the eight other compressor-cooled rinks without hockey boards in Etobicoke, are classified as “minor” rinks by Etobicoke parks management. All of their former rink change rooms have been kept locked for at least ten years. The rinks have no program staff, and so they show up on the city budget as very economical.

When I went by Queensway Rink in 2010 I saw a saw a brand new field house. But it was locked too. I wrote to the ward councillor, Peter Milczyn: why is the change room locked?

He invited me to come to his office and have a talk about it. He also invited capital projects coordinator Doug Giles and recreation supervisor Dave Hains. I brought Mayssan Shuja Uddin, who coordinates the three Ward 18 rinks.

Councillor Milczyn told us that the neighbourhood was established as a subdivision for returning soldiers just after World War Two, in 1947. Its streets curve around Queensway Park and one street goes right through. The park is surrounded by lots of cozy-looking small houses. Nobody at the meeting knew exactly when the rink was built. But the councillor said that around 1994 it was decided that the rink was run down and would soon need to be rebuilt, and it was put on the official “State-of-Good-Repair” list. There was a city-owned house across the street that was used as a senior’s centre. Since it wasn’t getting much attendance, the city sold the building for about $100,000 and put the money into the rink rebuilding fund.

Then came the forced amalgamation of the four cities. Councillor Milczyn said the sale money must have disappeared into the new City’s general funds. It was “really just a drop in the bucket” anyway, he said, for the funds needed to rebuild the rink. The rink project gradually moved up the capital projects to-do list, and in the summer of 2006, two architectural firms were hired to work on the design. The Queensway project was to include a new field house with a community room and a rink change room, as well as a rebuilt rink pad and a generously-sized, nicely landscaped parking area. The existing rink and the modest existing field house would go. The new rink would be square, instead of rectangular. The square shape was to encourage pleasure-skating and discourage the shinny hockey that the rink was mainly used for, which was seen as noisy and as tending to take over an outdoor rink, if given a chance.

The field house plan turned out to be too costly, so in 2007 the architects modified their plans to make a slightly smaller building, combining the skate changing room with the community meeting room. It was decided to do the project in stages, beginning not with the rink, but with the field house. $1.2 million was allocated, of which $250,000 was from the developer of an over-size condominium at Queensway and Islington. The rest was borrowed funds, to be gradually repaid though taxes and permit revenues. There was a cost overrun, and the final cost of the field house was $1.54 million.

There it stood, with tasteful soft-gray stone on the curving walls outside, lots of glass, and an impressive front entrance. But you can’t get in: there’s a sign that says “Building locked due to vandalism.” That’s not the only reason the doors are locked, though. When I first wrote to the councillor’s office to ask about the field house, his assistant wrote back: “Councillor Milczyn has advised that it is intended to be closed/locked unless it has actually been permitted out to the community.” The issue is cost recovery (a favourite term of city management).

How many permits would the City need to sell to pay off the $1.54 million cost of the field house? At $90 per permit (for such a small space), that would require 17,000 permits. If there were (realistically) three permits a week, it would take about 110 years to pay off the field house cost. At an unrealistic six permits a week, total field house cost recovery could be achieved in only 55 years. If permits went back-to-back on weekends as well, the field house cost might be recovered in 30 years.

Of course, that’s only the initial capital cost, and only of the field house, not of the new rink surface and the lights and the zamboni and the compressors. The considerable fuel costs to run the cooling plant, and the maintenance cost to keep such an intensively-used building clean and attractive to potential permit customers, are not included either.

So the goal of “cost recovery” for a fancy new rink is a pipe dream. It’s lucky that there are taxes to help pay for the Queensway Rink, so that permits only have to pay for a part of the cost.

But wait a minute....if taxes end up paying for most of the new rink, and yet the building is only used for private, paid permits, what are the taxpayers getting for their money, in return?

Not much, at the Queensway Rink field house. We learned from project coordinator Doug Giles that the building was completed in the fall of 2010. The councillor told us that up to 2011, when we were sitting in his office, no use had been made of it. There was no money left over for furniture, for one thing, so the “skate changing/meeting room” area is mostly empty, with only two wall-mounted benches. Perhaps because there are so few benches, the field house was never entered into the permit system. After more than a year of locked doors, skaters have no access to change their skates, and it’s not possible to get a permit either.

Etobicoke has nine so-called “minor” rinks, with cooling plants and daily visits by ice-resurfacer machines. Each of the rinks has a small-to-medium size field house with some kind of a neighbourhood clubhouse room inside it, and each of those clubhouses is kept locked. All of the field houses have washrooms, and those washrooms are also generally kept locked, year-round. In central Toronto, it’s assumed that people having picnics, people strolling under the trees, people with young children, older people – all need washroom access. But Councillor Milczyn told me that it’s not the practice in Etobicoke to provide washroom access for people who visit parks. “If they need to use a washroom, they can go home,” his assistant said.

We asked: what if a rink attendant were placed at the field house for four hours on Saturday afternoons and again on Sunday afternoons? Rink staff generally get minimum wage, so that would mean about $100 for the weekend, times twelve weeks is $1200 for the season. Then, if the recreation supervisor could scrounge a few old benches from some unused locker room, and borrow some rubber mats so the skaters could walk inside, perhaps the field house would begin its usefulness to those taxpayers who like to warm up, or chat, or go to the bathroom before they’re ready to go home....?

No dice. About ten years ago (by the recreation supervisor’s estimate) the decision was made not to place any staff at the half of Etobicoke’s rinks that are without hockey boards. That decision stands. The money’s not there, Councillor Milczyn said. But where, I asked, on the coldest winter days, would skaters change, if not in the room marked “skate change room” on the building plans? The councillor suggested the washroom, if it were opened to the public during skating hours.

That would match the situation of skaters at the new outdoor rink on the lakeshore, Sherbourne Commons. The glassed-in change room is off limits to skaters (only staff can sit in there). On cold days, skaters can change into their skates while sitting on the state-of-the-art toilets, or crouching in the corner near the sinks.

At least it’s warm.

Meantime, another five years later, the next phase of the Queensway Rink “State-of-Good-Repair” project will begin. As for the old Queensway ice rink plant that was deemed to be at the end of its useful life in 1994 – it ran until 2014. The old locked field house is still there now. It’s a rectangular box with no windows, but it looks pretty solid. It’s probably not much over 60 years old. (Buildings over 50 years old seem to automatically get on the city’s “overdue for replacement” list.)

What would have happened if, instead of borrowing money to build the $1.54 million new field house, the City had put some funds into the old field house? It would have needed a few eye-level windows, a new coat of paint, a couple of tables and benches, and a little kitchen/skate-lending room, plus some lights to illuminate the rink on the dark winter days (there’s only one small morality light). And what if the tax funds that the city uses every year now to pay the interest on its Queensway loan had been used instead to pay a few friendly, imaginative recreation staff? The question is not hypothetical. That’s more or less exactly what happened at Campbell Rink.