A $1 million facility upgrade project is underway at Eagles Ice Arena, located at 6321 N. Addison in North Spokane.

The two-phase project will replace and enhance the components of the facility’s refrigeration system, which has been in operation since the rink opened in 1973.

“We know we have a 50-year-old piece of machinery back there,” says David Van Den Berg, a member of the board of governors for the arena. “We wanted to be proactive, get ahead of the thing, and be able to swap it out and replace this unit on our time.”

The purpose of doing the project now is to get out ahead of any potential problems and avoid interrupting the arena customers’ use of the facility, Van Den Berg says.

The first phase of the project, which involved the installation of a new cooling tower, was completed in late December, Van Den Berg says.

Kemper Northwest Inc., a Caldwell, Idaho-based industrial refrigeration contractor, handled the installation.

Phase two of the project involves the building and installation of the refrigeration system. The installation is expected to occur in 2025 and take about a month, Van Den Berg says. The bidding process for the second phase is underway.

Once the project is completed, the new system will double the two-rink facility’s cooling capacity. The second rink was originally built as an outside rink, but when renovations were done to enclose that rink, no additional refrigeration capacity was added to account for it, Van Den Berg says.

“This is our time to increase our system capacity to match the actual demand,” he says.

The first rink is 17,000 square feet—the standard size of a National Hockey League rink—and the other one is slightly smaller, Van Den Berg says.

In addition to increasing refrigeration capacity, the project will include the modernization of components, Van Den Berg says.

“We’re looking at various types of automation and modernization with the components in order to reduce energy, be more energy efficient, even though we’re increasing our (refrigeration) capacity,” he says.

Eagles Ice Arena hosts hockey and skating classes, hockey leagues, public skating, and more. It is owned jointly  by Spokane Americans Youth Hockey Association, Spokane Oldtimers Hockey Association, and the Lilac City Figure Skating Club, three nonprofits that united to purchase the rink in 2017.