By LACEY FRYE, ELI SHUMAKER AND RONAN LAUTARU
The Ice Box, home of Penn Kingsmen Hockey, has stepped up its game.
Photo Gallery posted below.
During the summer of 2024 and the 2024-2025 hockey season, the Ice Box began renovating the ice rink and facilities. Now in its 50th season of hockey, the Ice Box renovated all of the old facilities except rinks 1 and 2, which included the old lobby, offices, concession stand, and pro shop. They also added a new rink with new Zamboni garages. This is much better because now the Ice Box can host more games, as there are three rinks to play on. They finished these renovations early this summer, and the new rink hosting games and practices.
The new and improved Ice Box renovation offers many new attributes to the old facility, including a brand new rink, additional locker rooms, a larger lobby, and a brand new skate shop. Rink 3 is the most important renovation as it allows for demanding ice times to be filled. Behind the rink are brand-new locker rooms that are a modern match for the others. Outside the rinks, fans are greeted with a brand-new lobby.
The lobby now includes a large screen that displays the games for people wanting to attend them, and where you can find the games. With this new lobby, a larger snack shop has been introduced, with lounge areas that include TVs so you don’t miss that night’s NFL game score. Along with the bigger lobby comes a new skate shop, where the players and fans can get their game attire. All these renovations are only going to enlarge the hockey community and offer more opportunities around the hockey community.
The renovation took roughly two years. It all started with the delivery of the new compressor (made in Minnesota and costing between $2.5 and $3 million dollars). About eight months later was ground breaking, then the project was completed 14 months later.
Major improvements included the addition of a third rink with four locker rooms, new officials locker room, new Zamboni room, third Zamboni, concession stand, skate rental, office spaces, Tape-2-Tape Pro Shop, a larger lobby, and in addition to rink to the renovation of the old figure skating room into a new girl/women’s locker room, and a larger lobby with; larger restrooms, more seating, fireplace, schedule screens, and advertising/viewing screens.
The cost was more than $12 million dollars. There have been a lot of donations from the community. In addition, Rinks one and two have new LED lighting donated by a hockey community member. The Ice Box staff was able to modify the safety cages around the lights, saving the cost of new cages.
