There was a large turnout Friday, March 19, for a groundbreaking ceremony for the future ice rink and pavilion that will be built along Park Avenue in Winona Lake. Organizers say construction will be complete in early 2022. Photo provided.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — Ground has been broken for Winona Lake’s future ice rink and pavilion.

The Village at Winona had a groundbreaking for the project on Friday, March 19. The 20,000 square-foot pavilion containing the rink will be built at the former site of the Billy Sunday Tabernacle along Park Avenue.

The town is using a process called BOT to project. BOT stands for build, operate and transfer and means a developer can essentially complete a project and later shift ownership to a government entity.

Winona Lake Town Council approved an agreement with WL Ice LLC to develop the project at its meeting on Tuesday, March 16. It was revealed at the meeting that the project is estimated to be finished in early 2022.

The project will include the pavilion containing the rink, an outdoor gas fireplace where skaters may warm up and a maintenance building.

Plans for the rink came together quickly last year after K21 Health Foundation offered $1.5 million to get the project going.

The Village at Winona Managing Director Nick Hauck and Winona Lake Town Manager Craig Allebach made statements at the ceremony.

“This has been almost 30 years in the making,” said Hauck, noting that various Kosciusko Leadership Academy members had submitted papers advocating for an ice skating rink.

“It’s pretty exciting to see all that hard work and dedication to those white papers come to fruition,” he continued. “We just wanted to thank everybody involved, Mary Louise Miller, Robinson Construction, the Town of Winona Lake, K21 Health Foundation and all the other various different community organizations that helped put this on for sure.”

“This is a community-wide event; this isn’t a Winona Lake thing,” he said. “This is a Kosciusko County event, so the pavilion is to service everybody, not just the locals around here.”

“We’ve really appreciated the partnership that we’ve developed not only with The Village at Winona, but other partners through this project,” said Allebach. “This really is a fruition of an idea that came out of our comprehensive plan and then we of course always appreciate the K21 Health Foundation. They’ve been very beneficial to the Town of Winona Lake and not only with our greenways, but of course with this pavilion and ice rink and really it’s their $1.5 million dollars really started this to kick off this project.”

“And so if it wasn’t because of that, maybe we wouldn’t be here today,” he continued. “So I want to thank them especially and also the Dane and Mary Louise Miller Foundation who provided another $250,000, so by the end of last year we were well on our way. We still have a long way to go and we’re going to start to formulate a group for fundraising.”

“Thank you for the support of the Winona Lake Town Council, the Winona Lake Redevelopment Commission,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of support from the City of Warsaw, like Nick said, this isn’t a Winona Lake thing; this is a Kosciusko County thing and we look for support throughout the county.”

At a public hearing for the project in February, leaders estimated the cost to be $6.5 million. Officials said then they plan to collect donations, possibly work with the Kosciusko County Community Foundation and possibly use Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to pay off the remaining balance.