They’re making ice at the civic center!
By Dan McClelland
The ice-making process is finally underway after weeks of anguish for school officials and concern by many parents who feared their children would have no place to skate this winter.
See editorial on page 4 this week.
After the re-building of the chilling vessel by specialists at the Mollenberg/ Betz firm of Rochester was completed last week, school officials were eyeing the long awaited process to begin to have ice by week’s end. Unfortunately there was another setback when problems with compressors occurred.
School officials called in the district’s refrigeration specialists, Hogan Refrigeration, which had a crew on site at the civic center much of Thursday and Friday.
The district’s senior maintenance technician, Sean Auclair, with the help of district staff and volunteers had the system operational by week’s end and started making ice. Their first job was packing slushy ice into the bottoms of the boards to form a frozen barrier to keep water from leaking under the wooden barrier that rings the skating sheet.
By Monday there was about a half an inch of ice on the grey concrete arena floor.
Enter Lake Placid’s Dan Wood, a retired ice-maker who spent most his career with the Olympic Regional Development Authority, maintaining its rinks in Lake Placid. So good at what he does, Dan apparently spent time in Utah making ice for Olympic officials there when that state hosted the Winter Olympics.
For over 20 years Dan has been helping the now retired district’s superintendent of buildings and grounds, Pierre St. Pierre and his crew make ice here each late fall.
Dan’s specialty is the application of a cream-of-wheat type mixture called “Jet Ice” that is applied to every new ice sheet to turn it from the grey color of the concrete floor to bright white. The Lake Placid volunteer is very skilled at operating a six-spray, ten foot long copper pipe device that is connected to a mixing tank and fed by a long supply hose that is long enough to reach all parts of the rink.
The spraying device he brings with him each year, on loan from ORDA.
The “Jet Ice” product magically turns the ice color from grey to white the second it’s sprayed on.
Mr. Auclair, helped by staffers Robert Durfee and Ben Lanthier, pulled the long hose, and kept it out of Mr. Wood’s way as he navigated the sprayer around the rink. Also helping was Kris Brunette, one of the capital project managers from Schoolhouse Construction.
Pierre St. Pierre, who is volunteering this week to help the district get its ice surface finished by the weekend, told the Free Press over the weekend that once the “Jet Ice” product is applied and another coat or two of water is applied, they should be ready to paint the red and blue lines and the face-off circles by later Monday afternoon.
Mr. St. Pierre has painted the ice many times over the years and was looking forward to helping his former staff to do it again this year.
An excited Superintendent of Schools Jaycee Welsh, for whom this unexpected ice-making setback has been a complicated nightmare in her first months of her first year leading the district, was at the arena keeping her fingers crossed Monday morning everything would go as planned.
She was optimistic there would be good ice to skate on by the weekend, and in time for the figure skating show planned there.
Many others are hoping for that too.
At Monday night’s village board meeting which the superintendent of schools has made a habit of attending every month since her arrival here in August, she was excited to announce the painting of the lines and circles was underway at the civic center. She was even more confident too there will be good ice for skating this weekend.