Revolution Place. Photo Credit: EverythingGP Staff

By Shane Clausing

Revolution Place upgrades

Storm engaging City on upgrades for Revolution Place

May 14, 2020 | 6:00 AM

Renovations and upgrades could be coming to Revolution Place, if the Swan City Hockey Association can see some or all of their recommended upgrades happen.

On May 7, 2020, the Swan City Hockey Association (which operates the Grande Prairie Storm) sent a letter to Grande Prairie City Councillor Wade Pilat about potential upgrades to Revolution Place.

The letter sent to Councillor Pilat details a three part plan which would see renovations include the addition of ‘loge’ style seating and private boxes on the east end of the arena, moving the box office from its current location to a more customer friendly location and renovating the southwest corner which would include a new covered loading dock and a convertible shared space, that would potentially include an expanded dressing room that would be converted into a proper backstage area for visiting entertainers and potentially a new dressing room for the Storm.

“This could be dealt with while the building is still being operated, it wouldn’t require any shutdown of the building,” said Grande Prairie Storm Vice President Chris Millsap.

“We hope it has a major impact in drawing acts and other users in that building and it would also have a significant impact on the fan experience for the Grande Prairie Storm fans for hockey games.”

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Millsap feels renovations to the 25-year-old facility are overdue.

“There’s been virtually nothing done to that building to enhance the experience for both the user groups and the citizens of Grande Prairie attending events at the building since 1995. It’s getting to the point where it’s become very much out of date,” said Millsap. “It’s not, in our opinion, generating the kind of revenue for the city that I think the city needs it to generate and certainly that the hockey team needs it to generate in order remain viable here.”

He adds that since Dawson Creek built the Encana Events Centre in 2008, the City of Grande Prairie has lost out on many major concerts and sporting events to the Mile Zero City.

Millsap says that addition of the ‘loge’ style seating and added seats would bring Revolution Place’s capacity up by a couple hundred seats. Drawings are still being rendered for what the plans could look like.

The estimated cost of the first phase of the project is expected to cost $1 million and could be completed by the end of December if it started soon. Costs for phase two and three are still being discussed.

“A couple things were important to us when we decided to push forward for this: Number one was enhancing the building and number two was getting people in Grande Prairie back to work and insuring that local companies were being contracted to do this work,” said Millsap. “It became quite clear that one of the best ways to do that was to seek some funding to put some people to work in a building that is just sitting empty with nothing going on.”

As of right now the project is in its infancy and it is unknown what type of funding could be approved from the City.