‘Time for us to step up’: Ituna opens $5.6M new arena project

WATCH: After almost a decade of raising money, the Town of Ituna’s new arena is up and running. Sierra D’Souza Butts has the story.

After almost 10 years of fundraising, the Town of Ituna has opened their new arena.

The $5.6 million project was fundraised by volunteers in the community who decided it was time that their old wooden structure rink was due for an upgrade.

“If we didn’t do anything at the point we were at, we wouldn’t have an arena,” explained David Renkas, vice-president of Ituna Community Arena Co-operative.

“You know, at one time the town built an arena for us, the community members and volunteers built an arena for us, so it was time for us to step up, do our part and build a rink for the next generation.”

Aside from being larger, the new building includes six changerooms and a referee room, along with multiple spaces for meetings that people can use.

“Within the last month or so that we’ve been open, we’ve noticed the improved activity around the arena,” Renkas shared, referring to the impact the arena has made to the community.

“We have a walking track around the arena where we have more community members starting to walk, we have a gathering space for meetings, we have a gathering space for hockey, for skating, school skating.”

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The town’s former arena was built in 1961 and has been well utilized since.

Although thoughts of upgrading the facility came to the community’s mind in 2015, the real push for fundraising began in 2017 when Ituna participated in the Kraft Hockeyville competition.

“(We’re) a big hockey community,” voiced parent and coach Cam Matus.

“Back in 2017, obviously taking second place in Kraft Hockeyville, really started putting us on the map. We’ve got kids from all ages doing hockey here, there and everywhere else.”

Matus added that the new arena will have a great impact on families.

“It’s going to being a huge difference for generations to come, just with the updated facility and how much we’re going to be able to use it regularly,” he said.

Another parent, Brittany Gent, said the renovated rink will help support youth in Ituna and strengthen the community.

“This is huge to my family. We are currently travelling, some for my older son, but this means we get to play locally, and we get to stay in town,” she shared.

“We get to be part of the community. It brings the community together, there’s so many of us that we get to know each other through hockey and it’s our own little hockey family.”

Renkas said he is grateful for the community’s support in helping make the new arena a reality.

“The project is $5.6 million as you see it today. We want to continue to build on that number, we owe some money on that – we owe $350,000 on that,” he said.

“We had some money from the Town of Ituna, from our local RMs, fundraising from our volunteers, from our community members who donated money, and our corporate sponsors. We also had a little bit of federal money that helped along the way. I just want to thank the public and all of the people and everyone that came out to support us over the last 10 years.”

Although the project is completed, Renkas said the group will continue to fundraise to help add future amenities to the arena.

“We want to build on that, put improvements in the next however many years,” he explained.

“It’s there for whatever we want to do, maybe one day it’s a pickleball court, maybe it’s indoor lacrosse, who knows what we want to do with the building. It’s going to be here forever and up to the community to decide.”