The Prince George Coliseum is no more, but still is.
The building continues to stand where it always has, at the dogleg of Patricia Boulevard and Dominion Street, where it is home to the Prince George Spruce Kings BCHL Hockey Club. The name, however, has been paved over. It is now the Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. The signs haven't been changed, yet, but the deal was set in stone this week and will get council's formal ratification during Monday's regular public meeting.
The deal is for $25,000 to $30,000 per year to be shared between public and Spruce Kings coffers (they are a community-owned team). Some of that will be contributed in cash and some in concrete work to support the building of the annual Spruce Kings Show Home Lottery house. It is a five-year pact.
"This arrangement supports a well-established, successful, and community-owned sports team while providing funds that can be allocated to the continuing maintenance of the Coliseum, which was built in the mid-1950s," said city manager Kathleen Soltis.
"Rolling Mix Concrete is excited to embark on this new journey with our community partners: the City of Prince George and the Spruce Kings," said John Paolucci, president and CEO of the all-local family business.
"Rolling Mix Concrete takes great pride in helping the community and organizations that support us."
Spruce Kings president Tom Bohmer, a former Spruce Kings player himself, said this was a good fit, having a longtime family business mix together with a longtime local sports institution.
"Rolling Mix has been locally owned and operated for more than 50 years and they have been a longtime supporter of junior hockey in our community," he said. "The Spruce Kings organization is more than 40 years old and we feel that there are three critical ingredients that explain our success to date: terrific and loyal fans, entertaining hockey, and creative partnerships like this one that we have with a local business as well as with the City."
It took more than three years of negotiation before the aggregated parties could solidify this deal. The City of Prince George's manager of community partnerships, Brad Beckett, said City Hall was still between a rock and a hard place on the paid naming of civic structures, but this deal couldn't be passed up and would act as an example for future decision-making on who gets to buy naming rights in the city.
"We do not have a set plan, but we did have two templates to go by: the way we arranged for the naming of Citizen Field and the naming of CN Centre. These were special situations, but they helped us move these negotiations forward," Beckett said.
"We don't have an actual policy, but we have it in our 2016 work plan to develop a formal naming rights policy. That will become our guiding direction moving forward. We know there are other groups champing at the bit for this, this policy is needed and will be helpful no doubt, and we plan to have that ready by the end of the year."
In the meantime, Beckett said, people should work on the actions for singing a new refrain at the old rink, to a familiar tune by The Village People: "It's fun to play at the R-M-C-A."
