The Orillia Minor Hockey Association has had to scramble to replace lost ice time after the Orillia Community Centre closed on Wednesday. City engineers said the building is structurally unfit. (Kevin Light/CBC Sports)

An arena closure in Orillia, Ont., has sent minor hockey in the region into disarray.

The Orillia Community Centre's doors were closed last Wednesday by city council, which cited “structural concerns.”

“We are devastated by this news, as the Orillia Community Centre is a well used facility within the city,” Orillia mayor Ron Stevens said in a release.

Cathy O’Connor, president of the Orillia Minor Hockey Association (OMHA), knows exactly how “well-used” that facility is. “We’ve lost 54 hours of ice a week,” she said. The Orillia Community Centre is one of only two arenas in the city.

Connor, however, describes the situation as “devastating, sickening, and unnecessary.” It has had her scrambling to save the house league and rep programs for the season.

“Everybody knew this was coming," she said. "The community centre was on its last legs. It’s 50 years old.”

The OMHA has managed to save both programs after a series of emergency meetings, but not without cost.

Public skating cancelled

O’Connor says public skating is cut for the rest of the year, and so are a number of adult programs in the city, to make sure that the OMHA house and rep leagues survive.

“There’s going to be other people more upset than minor hockey is,” she said.

O’Connor says that all practice time has been scrapped in the city.

House league teams will get refunds, as they won’t make up the lost ice time, but rep teams who need practice time to gear up for the upcoming playoffs will have to log a lot of kilometres on the road, she said.

“The rep teams are going to have to travel,” O’Connor said. Surrounding communities, like Barrie, Ramara, Coldwater, and others have stepped up to the plate, offering the OMHA ice time in their facilities.

O’Connor says that most of the city’s anger is being directed at its council, which has been concentrating on building a multi-use recreational facility for the last three years.

Instead, O’Connor says the council should have focused on building a new twin-pad arena, instead of getting tied up in a project that might still be years away from seeing the light of day, if at all.

“The council has failed us,” she said.

Push to action

O’Connor hopes that the loss of the community centre galvanizes the city to act and build the two-pad arena she thinks the city desperately needs.

“People are outraged, so maybe this is what we needed to get people moving,” she said.

For now, O’Connor wants at least a temporary facility built, to save the OMHA a ton of scheduling headaches next season.

“We’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on council to get something up,” she said.

One piece of good news for the city is that Hockey Day in Orillia still went ahead on Saturday. It was going to be held at the community centre, but O’Connor says the OMHA was able to move it to the other arena.