As the Penn State Icers played their home opener against Drexel Friday night, some special guests were in attendance.
Penn State President Graham Spanier, Associate Athletic Director for Ice Arena Operations Joe Battista, and Terry and Kim Pegula — whose $88 million dollar donation made the future ice arena construction possible — were all in attendance to show their support.
While the Icers’ season has gotten off to a strong 3-0 start after an 11-0 rout of Drexel, those guests have been working to select the architect of the state-of-the-art arena set to open in Spring 2014.
Battista said the Request For Proposals (RFP) have been sent out to multiple architects and all have responded with their qualifications. He said the possible choices have worked with Penn State in the past, and all have experience with ice arena design.
“We’ve cast the nets very broadly to begin with,” Spanier said.
Spanier said the Board of Trustees Architectural Selection Committee will narrow the choices to 12 before selecting three-to-five finalists to visit State College and make a formal presentation. The committee is made up of Board of Trustees members, an architecture professor, a student and representation from the Office of the Physical Plant (OPP).
Battisa said the finalists will be notified by Oct. 18. They will make their presentations in mid-November and then the board will decide.
“They’ve given us their qualifications. Based on their past work, on their thoughts, and their philosophies, we’ll decide which one is the best fit for what we’re trying to do,” Battista said. “It’s exciting, I can tell you.”
A few weeks after the decision on the architect, the board will follow the same process again to decide on a construction team. Battista said they hope to break ground in the next 9-12 months, in either late-summer or early-fall 2011.
Once the architect is decided, Battista said they will receive a sheet of programs of features the university wants in the building. Battista, Spanier and the Pegulas have traveled to different hockey rinks around the United States to help decide what they want in the arena.
“We’ll go through this list with the architects to make sure they know exactly where we want to be,” Battista said. “How many club seats we want, how many suites we want, how many different locker rooms we want and so on.”
One feature Battista said he wants in the arena is the implementation of the USA Cross Ice youth hockey program, in which dividers come across the ice, dividing it into thirds. It would allow for an expanded youth hockey league, with six teams playing at one time.
While nothing has been officially decided, Battista said the most important thing to him is making sure it’s a multi-use facility.
“To me, we have to make this thing pay for itself,” Battista said. “So we have to have enough locker rooms to be able to host a lot of tournaments. We want to be able to have lockers for public use and areas for youth and high school area programs to store their equipment. We want the intramural players to have a place. That’s how you make money in a facility like this.”
The plan for the arena has been set in motion because of the Pegula’s Sept. 17 donation, the largest single donation in Penn State history. Spanier said the effect of the announcement has been felt with the near-capacity crowd at the Icers’ first game.
“I am always so impressed with the turnout that we have here for hockey at Penn State,” Spanier said. “The enthusiasm is unbelievable, and it’s really been elevated a lot with this new gift.”