The frozen subsoil under the now-removed floor of ice rink #1 at the Community Center has now been thawed. The subsoil was frozen to a depth of 10 feet in several places. It took more time than we hoped, but now that the thawing is complete, the construction of the rink floor freezing system can now begin.
We expected the contractor to start today, but they are completing another project and will roll into our project first thing tomorrow morning. The contractor, Commercial Refrigeration, Inc. of Hibbing, has their materials and labor here in Eden Prairie. My staff spoke with them today. They are ready to roll.
This project hit us at an unfortunate time. Ideally, it would be a good project to design in the fall; bid in the winter; and start as soon as hockey season is over in the spring. Unfortunately, we discovered a significant leak of both freezing and insulating chemicals this summer during an inspection. Federal and state environmental regulations would not permit us to ignore what we saw. We had to act.
We could have taken the rink down for the winter, but asking the community to focus all of its ice demands on one sheet of ice would not have worked. We took the risk and got the project going. We accelerated all the project time lines and agreed to pay premium costs in order to get the project completed before November 1st.
It looks like we might make that deadline, but it’s going to be close.
