H-F Ice Arena Set To Reopen To Public After 'Long Road' Of Renovations

FLOSSMOOR, IL — There have been times, Lindsay Freeman admits, when seeing the light of the construction tunnel was difficult to detect.

For more than a year, the Homewood-Flossmoor Ice Arena has been closed to the public while the facility’s failing ice-making system was being replaced. The major undertaking required an addition to the arena to be built to house the new system while work was also done inside the rink area and new boards and glass were installed.

What once was a sand floor under the main ice surfaces has been replaced with concrete before new ice was put down, completing a long and winding project that has required not only required long hours of work on the part of construction crews, but plenty of patience for those longing to get back on the ice.

Since the arena closed in November 2021, the house hockey leagues that the rink hosts were forced to find other places to call home while the public skating sessions and birthday parties that have made the arena such a fixture in the Homewood-Flossmoor community could not take place.

But that will change this weekend when the arena has soft opening on Sunday, when public skating will return. The facility’s house hockey programs returned to the ice on Tuesday night, two days after the rink hosted an ice-skating competition that filled the arena’s seating area. And as Freeman, the arena’s manager, has started to see people slowly trickle back into the facility after such a long time away, she has realized just what the rink means to area residents.

“It’s such a long process,” Freeman told Patch on Wednesday. “It was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for a while, but once construction finally started moving and moving in the right direction, you could see the building start to come back to life.”

That process was complicated by stops and starts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as supply chain issues which also created issues in how quickly the work at the arena could be completed, Freeman said.

The final costs for the project have yet to be determined, according to Freeman, who characterized the financial aspect of the project as being substantial. But after more than a year of waiting, the fact skaters are now able to begin returning to home ice has been encouraging for Freeman. In preparation for Sunday's soft opening, the park district also released a time-lapse video of the final touches being put on the ice surface inside the arena.

Arena officials were originally hoping to reopen the facility to the public beginning Friday but will instead wait until Sunday when the arena can be fully staffed. Freeman said that the arena’s staff has been fielding phone calls for a while now from residents wondering exactly when they would again be able to use the facility to which Freeman says that most people in the surrounding communities have some connection.

Skating classes will resume on March 6 and the rink is starting to slowly accept reservations for birthday skating parties an other events, which Freeman said is just the next step in what has been a very long road toward re-opening for good.

“I think we’ve learned about ourselves – what people really got out of our program, how they view us,” she said. “I think H-F (Ice Arena) is kind of a local institution for people who learned to skate here. I think when we closed, it showed how much of an impact this place has made.”

The fact that the arena was able to keep its house hockey program going by accessing other local rinks while the H-F facility underwent the renovations was a big win, Freeman said. By allowing its home teams to continue to keep its family together was meaningful despite not playing on the ice they’re accustomed.

But when the teams took the ice for the first time in nearly 14 months on Tuesday night, Freeman said the fact the rink is again open for business is only the first of things to come, Freeman said. But welcoming the public back has, like the rest of the process, required some measure of waiting. Freeman said that arena officials wanted to make sure every aspect of the project was done correctly before announcing a re-opening date to avoid any issues that could creep in if the process was rushed.

“We were not going to take any chances,” Freeman told Patch. “We wanted to make sure that we were able to open and open the right way – that the ice was ready and that we weren’t putting out expectations we couldn’t meet.”