You’re a little behind the eight ball Opinion 250. Napp began demolition of Kin 1 on Friday.

Sorry skipp999,
the good folks in charge of this demolition tell me “For the record, today is the first day of “bites” out of the Kin Centre. Friday was just a little warm up but nothing significant.”

-Elaine Macdonald-

Looks like fun. They say demolition is up amongst the most satisfying jobs in the world…

Its going to be ready for September 2013, nope, not going to happen. Sorry for being a pestimest, but I doubt they will meet the deadline. May be January 2014

its not hard to build a quonset in a year … pour new ice surface with brine coils will be the hardest … the outer shell should be done by feb 2013 ish … the rest of the time will be interior work

40 years … I guess that is a temporary building these days.

I meean look at the technical changes since then.
1. steel structure
2. concrete floor
3. wooden bleachers
4. glass windows
5. steel studs
6. batt insulation
7. plastic vapour barrier
8. drywall
9. paint

It will be nice to see a 21st century building for the 21st century athletes.

What will we give this building? 40 years again?

So let me ask the questions.

1. What went wrong with the first building?

2. What will be done with the new building so it will last longer?

Or, maybe, we actually do not want it to last longer. 40 years is about as long as we can stand looking at the same old building over and over again.

Sort of like our wardrobe. Maybe that is what city buildings are, the city’s wardrobe.

I don’t know what went wrong, but the Kin Centres are (were) dumps.

What went wrong??!! Easy…buildings get well designed and then the politicians get involved. After that it’s cut, cut, cut because people who never use the buildings, or only want better roads at all costs (aka “squeaky wheels”), demand less money to be spent and out come all of the “expensive” items that actually make a building last, not to mention be useable for users.
In most examples these same politicans personally take part in the “cost cutting” exercises and use their VAST (zero) knowledge to help decide what gets cut, resulting in a giant piece o’ crud that lasts half of what it should.
I’ve seen it happen time after time and been involved in trying to make the political types understand their decisions but they don’t listen because they’re the “experts”!
Don’t even get me started on ensuring there is an adequate budget to maintain a building. This also knocks another significant amount of time off the lifespan as band-aid after band-aid gets applied.
End result of all this is a building that is barely useable to start, does not meet demand from day one and is shot after 25-30 years of overuse and undermaintenance.

“End result of all this is a building that is barely useable to start, does not meet demand from day one and is shot after 25-30 years of overuse and undermaintenance.”

This sums it up nicely.

“I don’t know what went wrong, but the Kin Centres are (were) dumps.”

Dumps is an understatement. The dressing rooms in Kin1 weren’t even big enough for a team of 7 year old kids.

You wrote it all, realitycheck. I have experienced the same thing.

CNC is another prime example …. built in the mid 1970’s at a time of rapid escalating construction prices … bricks turned into painted concrete block, precast concrete turned into off-the form concrete with barely enough money to sandblast themn lightly, quarry tile turned into vinyl tile, roof structure over the gym that should have been steel changed to concrete due to high price of steel, walls that should have been brick turned into cheap double T precast concrete since we actually had a precast concrete factory of sorts here.

The best was done to accommodate the client’s needs/wants, but the outcome, both aesthetically and from a practical maintenance point of view, was not what it should have been.

The ice arenas may have been more economical if they had been industrial prefab “Behlen” buildings to start with.

Speaking of aesthetics, have a look at all the uncarved “totem poles” lying on the RCMP construction site ….. money like that was not available for the College buildings 40 years ago, nor for the Ice arenas.

I though CNC was constructed in 1969. However it was constructed, it has educated a lot of people in this community.

The majority of PG’s best hockey has been played in that old cinder block and tin structure. Thank You Kinsmen Club for raising the funds , back when just borrowing for everything was not acceptable, thank you city of PG and Tidy Insulators for insulating it with formaldehyde and a couple of lost seasons for the removal of the insulation, many great memories……..thank you Kin1. You were my favourite ice surface.

The buildings facing Central were the original vocational school which began to train students in 1962. There were five buildings: two individual shop buildings (welding and automotive); an administrative building for dental assisting, secretarial and business machine type programs; an open walled sawmill building; and a power house with steam boilers. (You know, one of those “community” heating plants delivering steam through underground tunnels to the heated buildings).

The College of New Caledonia was created in 1969 (that is probably your reference to 1969) but had no campus. They started off in PGSS using their labs and “portable” buildings.

The first CNC building constructed was the Gym, then the expansion to the power house and then the main buildings connecting the gym, power house and old admin building. Also, a new shop was built to connect the original two shops and form one building. During the construction period, and until the third floor was completed a couple of years later, there was a large grouping of temporary buildings constructed on campus.

That construction happened between 1974 and 1977.

No matter how much disgruntled and spoiled user groups complain about the condition of Kin 1, some facts remain:
-vastly superior to an outdoor rink
-poorly maintained by the City (not enough budget?)
– a fancy new rink is being constructed to impress visitors in 2015, not to ease the long suffering user groups
Do you really think that the paltry sums we pay to use the Kin facilities reflect the actual cost of operation?
Will ice time be as cheap once the games are done and the new rink is turned over to rec hockey?
Maybe be happy for what you (had) as bad as it seemed.
Furthermore:
-four men and a boom lift could have stripped the cladding and roofing off the structure in 3 or 4 days, there are plenty of people around who would buy it and re-use it for their barn/shed/horse shelter or whatever.
Labour and rental costs + a few bucks from sales would compare well to several days of excavator and clean up time.
Re-use of metal and wood materials is better for the environment than re-cycling will ever be.
metalman.

Hey Gus, whats your point. Dosent appear to have anything to do with the Kin Cantre.. Your boring us to death with all this knowlege.
Cheers

“No matter how much disgruntled and spoiled user groups complain about the condition of Kin 1, some facts remain:
-vastly superior to an outdoor rink”

Wow. That’s quite the accomplishment. The Kin Centres rate about a 1 or 2 out of 10 in terms of indoor ice rinks. They’re pretty disgraceful.

“Do you really think that the paltry sums we pay to use the Kin facilities reflect the actual cost of operation?”

Maybe, maybe not. If they bump the price to cover the costs, would anyone be able to afford it or would it sit empty? If nobody can afford to use it, it would sure drive the maintenance costs down.

“Wow. That’s quite the accomplishment.”
Thanks, JohnnyB.
Hey, kin 1 got you out of the weather, on decent ice, for a reasonable sum. Friends and family had a place to sit, with heaters! Dressing rooms were not roomy, but better than nothing.
metalman.