The expansion of the Leaside Gardens Arena is one step closer to reality after city council approved the project as part of its capital budget.

“We’re quite delighted by it,” said Brooke Biscoe. “It gets us past one major hurdle in making this project happen.”

Biscoe is the chairperson of the Leaside Gardens Board of Management, which runs the city owned rink on Millwood Road. Plans to build the much-needed second ice pad at the Leaside Gardens have been in the works for more than a decade as user groups have struggled to find enough ice time to meet their needs.

All prime-time ice (between 5 and 11 p.m. weekdays and between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. weekends) at the 60-year-old arena is fully booked with 95 per cent of that time devoted to youth non-competitive use.

“We don’t have any ice left to rent,” Biscoe said.

The three main user groups at the rinks are the Leaside Skating Club, Leaside Hockey Association and Toronto Leaside Girls Hockey Association; Biscoe said the skating club had to turn down more than 60 children for its learn to skate program this year because they just didn’t have enough ice time.

The Leaside Arena Expansion Project will see the current rink twinned and cost an estimated $9.5 million, of which $7 million will come from a city-guaranteed loan to be repaid through future operating revenues, and $2.5 million must be raised by the primary partner groups and the local community.

Arena Expansion Committee chairperson Paul Mercer said the community has already raised $1.4 million and the fundraising sub-committee has been busy trying to secure the rest. One option is to allow one of the interested corporations to purchase the naming rights.

Mercer is thrilled the project was approved, but knows there is more work to be done.

“We still have a lot of work to do. The donor family did their part to get things moving. City council has done its part by approving the project. Now it’s up to the community to do our part and raise the $2.5 million.” Mercer said.

“We’re more than half way towards our goal but we have more to raise before August 1st in order to keep the project on schedule.”

In 2010, a local family stepped forward with an anonymous donation that enabled the hiring of an architect and planning work with city officials to begin.

“If they didn’t do what they did…We’re a year ahead of where we would have been otherwise,” Mercer said.

Before the donation and the approval, the plan first began to accelerate in 2009 when the city agreed to buy the adjacent property (formerly home to the Ontario Film Review Board) on which the second pad will be built.

If everything stays on track the goal is a August ground breaking and a completion date of the following September – just in time to kick off the 2012 skating and hockey season.

Source: InsideToronto.com

It’s half past five and dawn is casting its early light along the snowbanks. Team Kypreos is transporting skaters out to at least one of three possible practices.With three children, ages 6, 10 and toe-dragging on the threshold of 12, this is a common occurrence for Nick and his wife, Anne Marie.

“I personally am a huge fan of the morning practice,” says the Rogers Sportsnet Hockeycentral analyst. “Being the only one on the road at that time of day, finding a way to sneak in a coffee or bagel before practice on Bayview is a bit of a tradition for me and my kids now.”

Kypreos is no stranger to the road, being a former Toronto Maple Leaf and Stanley Cup winner in 1994 with New York Rangers.

Still, a penalty Kypreos would like to kill is travel time.

“Our community puts, at last count, over 300,000 kilometres on driving outside of our community to get to rinks,” he said. “So first and foremost being able to play right in Leaside, GTHL games, I think would mean an awful lot to our community.

“That’s pretty much our number one goal, to really embrace our community in an ongoing basis,” he added. “We don’t play games in Leaside, unfortunately, and we should.”

So with that, Kypreos admitted, the Bayview heartline could use another rink because of the rich tradition of hockey there.“The focus is on a second ice pad, which we feel like we’re getting closer (to), but there’s still some obstacles to get over,” he said. “We feel like we can be the first rink up and running in Toronto in the last 40 years almost.”

When Kypreos uses the second person, he’s referring to all Leasiders who have come to the aid of Canada’s game. Though Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke and Buds legend Doug Gilmour are looking to give a glove up, an entire community is ready to throw the gloves off for their cause.

“There are challenges for sure with the figure skating and the girls hockey, but a second icepad would alleviate a lot of those hurdles,” Kypreos said of getting a new rink. “We’re definitely trying our best to let the next generation hopefully follow in our footsteps of trying fulfill their dreams.”

The hockey tradition that permeates a small parcel of East York also blankets a portion of Kypreos’ property.

In his backyard, a homemade rink beckons the retired NHLer’s kids. Sons Zachary, Theo, playing AA peewee and A atom respectively, along with daughter Anastasia, fresh-footed in the girls league, take the surface. Nick’s wife Anne Marie, a native Floridian turned “excellent hockey mom”, also enjoys the steady flow of stick-meets-puck.

As a father, Kypreos is just passing down what he loves most.

“At the end of the day, the only tradition that you want to make sure you pass along is there is only one reason why you play this game to begin with and that is to have fun,” Kypreos said. “The moment it really doesn’t become fun is the moment you’ve got to find something else to do.”

For the Kypreos family, as well as Leasiders, there’s no fun lost, only expansion.

Source: MyTownCrier.ca