$8.5M TC Curling Center targets December soft opening | Local News | record-eagle.com

2022-09-24 02:55:58 By : Ms. Grace Xie

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 46F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 46F. Winds light and variable.

The 28,000 square foot Traverse City Curling Center, currently under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center will have ice soon, and plans to be open around the end of the year.

Visitors were handed a curling broom as they checked out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City.

Visitors talk during a sneak peak of the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Visitors mingle as they check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Visitors got a chance to check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Curling brooms sit against a wall as visitors check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

The Traverse City Curling Center is construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center.

Design drawings sit on display for visitors as they check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Traverse City Curling Club founder Don Piche speaks Wednesday at the site of the Traverse City Curling Center, where work is in progress for an anticipated December soft opening and January start of league play.

The 28,000 square foot Traverse City Curling Center, currently under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center will have ice soon, and plans to be open around the end of the year.

Visitors were handed a curling broom as they checked out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City.

Visitors talk during a sneak peak of the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Visitors mingle as they check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Visitors got a chance to check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Curling brooms sit against a wall as visitors check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

The Traverse City Curling Center is construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center.

Design drawings sit on display for visitors as they check out the Traverse City Curling Center under construction in the former K-Mart at the Cherryland Center on Wednesday in Traverse City. The 28,000 square foot facility is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Traverse City Curling Club founder Don Piche speaks Wednesday at the site of the Traverse City Curling Center, where work is in progress for an anticipated December soft opening and January start of league play.

TRAVERSE CITY — Those running the Traverse City Curling Center hope to open the “world-class” building to the public in January.

The Traverse City Curling Club and its board hosted an open house for media and potential investors Wednesday, showing off the work already done since starting construction in June at the former Kmart property in the Cherryland Center.

“What you see behind you is a monument to the perseverance, resilience and incredible passion to our mission: Building a strong community through the sport of curling,” TC Curling Club president Cara Colburn said. “The Traverse City Curling Center will be an absolute gem for our community for generations to come.”

Colburn said the facility’s target dates are December for a soft opening and starting league play in January 2023 in the $8.5 million project.

Vice president Kevin Byrne said the group hopes to raise the final $1.5 million of that cost by the time it opens so that the group is debt-free once a $2 million state grant through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation arrives in the 2023 fiscal year. Until then, the group has a bridge loan through the Great Lakes Sports Commission.

The facility, which will house five sheets of curling ice within a few weeks, cost $8.5 million between buying the former Kmart 11-acre property for $3.3 million and many needed upgrades to the building to turn it into a curling venue. Nine acres of the property consists of parking lots surrounding the building, and the club hopes to lease 55,000 square feet of retail space left outside of the 28,000 square foot curling venue in the former big-box store’s footprint.

The building required $1 million to install refrigeration for the ice sheets, another $1 million for dehumidifiers, and $2 million for “creature comforts,” Byrne said.

A separate heating element runs under the refrigeration unit, using heat generated from the freezing units and piped in to keep the ground below at 40 degrees and prevent foundation warping. Under the playing surfaces dwells a bottom layer of 12 inches of sand, a vapor barrier, eight inches of insulation, a liner and then the freezing tubes.

Among the facility’s features are a “warm room” — a bar area for post-match socializing — men’s and women’s changing rooms, a pro shop, a donor wall, community room, kitchen and a glassed-in 1,571 square-foot viewing area at the far end of the ice sheets that will eventually feature TV monitors showing play at the opposite ends. Additional monitors in the warm room will also show the gameplay.

The curling surface is being installed by ISS, the same German-based company that handled the playing surface at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The $85,000 worth of steel used for the curling surface came from the last shipment out of Mariupol, Ukraine, before the Russian invasion in February, Byrne said.

“What we’re building here is a very special thing,” club treasurer Lowell Gruman said. “This facility is going to be the top one in the United States.”

About the only parts remaining of the Kmart interior are two of the restrooms, which Kmart renovated just months before shuttering the Traverse City location in 2017. The building stood vacant since.

Professional bagpiper Stephen MacNeil played and led the crowd entering the building for its christening, and those in attendance thumped curling brooms on the concrete floors to the piper’s beat. The crowd did a toast to the piper, a tradition in the opening of new curling facilities.

The club operated out of Centre Ice Arena on the outskirts of Traverse City since starting in 2014.

“In some ways, it’s kind of unreal to think that eight years ago, we were talking about, ‘Hey, let’s just have a club,’ to now building this world-class club,” TCCC founder Don Piche said.

Piche said the ice should be down within a few weeks.

Colburn said the club’s board members donated about $500,000 of their own money to the effort.

Piche said the group hopes to host an event on the professional curling circuit, as well as possibly attract the United States Olympic Trials, which were held in Omaha, Nebraska in 2017 and 2021.

“We super excited about getting kids involved,” Piche said. “I got two calls this week from schools.”

The club purchased a 4.3-acre plot of land in the Hammond Industrial Center off Birmley Road in 2020 to construct a curling center, but steep steel price increases during the COVID-19 pandemic stopped that development from getting off the ground. The club has that property listed for sale, Byrne said.

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