Ed Meagher Arena to Get $6.5 Million Facelift

Concordia Matches Government Donation

SportsAndrew Maggio — Published July 26, 2012

The Stingers’ skating rink will be getting an overhaul, slated to be done by the start of next year’s hockey season.

The Quebec government and Concordia University announced a $6.5 million joint investment for the reconstruction and redevelopment of the Ed Meagher Arena at Loyola Campus in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on July 26.

Minister of Immigration and Cultural Communities Kathleen Weil, Liberal MNA for NDG, announced that the government would be providing $3.25 million from the Quebec-Municipalities Infrastructure Program.

The donation comes one week before the official start of provincial elections.

Frederick Lowy, Concordia’s outgoing president and vice-chancellor, was on hand to thank the Quebec government, Minister Weil and to announce that the university would be matching the investment.

Players and coaches alike from the school’s hockey programs were excited about the news.

“It’s definitely a good thing for the program,” said fourth-year center George Lovatsis, “Having newly updated equipment will allow recruits to see that our hockey programs are developing and improving, and it could possibly be the deciding factor for someone to come to Concordia.”

Men’s hockey coach Kevin Figsby echoed many of the same sentiments.

“I think there will be major advantages for a number of things,” said Figsby. “It’ll be a lot better from a community perspective that we’ll have a rink that’s fully functional for 12 months of the year, and for our varsity teams it’ll be absolutely fantastic.

“We’ll also be able to get a lot more involved with high-performance camps, we’ve been asked numerous times by Hockey Canada and Hockey Quebec to run camps, and while we were able to provide classrooms and auditorium facilities we could never use the ice. Anytime you’re able to run those kind of camps you bring a lot more visibility to your university.”

The initial plan is to update the ice surface to standard NHL-sized dimensions, while also replacing the refrigeration system and redesigning the notoriously cramped locker rooms and storage space. Other planned improvements include changes to the current roof and windows.

The developments will allow the arena to remain a fully-operational ice-surface year-round, which will benefit not only the Concordia Stingers men’s and women’s hockey programs, but recreational users and local community teams as well.

The work is expected to be completed in the fall of 2013.