By @MichaelCaples –
It’s not going to be easy, but they’re going for it.
Vince Brooks, former vice president of Perani’s Hockey World, is the general manager of the new Crystal Fieldhouse, an ice arena in Genesee County.
Not familiar with the Crystal Fieldhouse name? It used to be the Ice Mountain Arena Complex, a rink in Burton, Mich., that closed in 2012 and had been badly burglarized during its dormancy period.
Purchased by Genesee Ceramic Tile owner Jim Cokley, the building and its 23 acres were going to be used as a warehouse for the company, which owns other properties in the surrounding area. However, when Cokley started fielding some phone calls, he realized there might need to be a different purpose for the vacant rink.
“Jim Cokley is the owner, and he started getting all these phone calls from people in the community,” Brooks said. “He’s a real big Burton booster, rotary member, and he just started getting phone calls from people out of the woodwork, ‘thank you so much for buying this rink and wanting it to turn it back into the rink for the community.’ So before too long, he decided, ‘you know what, I’m going to turn it into a rink, against our better judgment.’”
Going against the advisement of multiple hockey industry leaders, Cokley has pursued turning his abandoned arena into the new Crystal Fieldhouse, and he has Brooks working as general manager for the facility.
“He decided that he wanted to do this for the community, which you have to admit is pretty admirable, knowing that it’s going to be a money-losing operation for a while,” Brooks said. “So we started construction on getting it back to a hockey rink. There were three break-ins before he bought it, where they did a lot of damage to electrical, anything copper they took – a lot of broken stuff – so he’s spending a lot of money getting it back.”
A break-in attempt in January 2013 resulted in an ammonia leak that prevented police from entering the building. Just a year and a half later, the two-sheet Crystal Icehouse already has one ice surface being used by the public.
“We pretty much had to redo all the electrical, the chiller units, the condensers, the compressors, because they pretty much tore the copper out of everything,” Brooks said. “We’re redoing lighting, more energy-efficient. We haven’t decided yet for the arena itself, we’re probably going to do LED but that’s still a few months out.
“The key is to get open ice, get bodies in the building, show them what we have and be a positive influence on the community.”
The new building will be working with the Greater Flint Hockey Association – who is moving as their official in-house program for this upcoming season – to recruit new players of all ages to the sport. Brooks said the main goal for his staff is to create an environment that people want to be a part of.
“I think a lot of it’s going to be getting the doors open, getting across that it’s not your typical dirty, smelly ice arena – it’s something different,” Brooks said. “I’m telling all these people that we have to be different to succeed here. We have to be friendly, we have to make things happen, we’ve got to make people’s day. When they come here, we want them to feel like it’s their rink.”
University of Michigan-Flint and the Elite Skating Academy will also be first participants in the new building. Brooks said that the arena became operational too late into the ice-booking season to attract high school programs, but he is confident that a few varsity teams will be coming to the Crystal Fieldhouse in the upcoming seasons.
Here’s a video from ABC 12 in Flint: