Home City Ice

Shawnee ice facility closed for renovations

When Shawnee’s ice sports facility reopens later this summer it will be under a new name and with extensive renovations — but it still won’t ease an area-wide ice shortage.

Ice Sports, 19900 Johnson Drive, is now called Kansas City Ice Center. The facility’s new tenants shut it down in late May and plan to reopen in late July with new mechanical equipment and many other updates.

“They are renovating the entire rink,” Ice Center spokeswoman Carrie Greene said. “We really want to build an elite training center for hockey players and figure skaters.”

Greene said hockey camps and skating classes at Kansas City Ice Center would have run throughout the summer but that the facility plans to offer them as soon as it reopens.

Kansas City Ice Center will not build a second ice rink this summer, but facility mangers say adding another rink remains a possibility for the future.

With Shawnee’s rink out of commission, Johnson County skaters and hockey players must drive across the state line to find ice. The metropolitan area’s two other facilities are in Kansas City and Independence.

Since its chiller system failed in January, Johnson County’s other ice sports facility, Pepsi Ice Midwest at 135th Street and Quivira Road in Overland Park, shut down and reopened as EPIC Indoor Sports — subtracting three rinks from the number available metrowide.

EPIC sold its rental skates to the Shawnee rink and converted its two NHL-sized rinks into an indoor soccer field and a large special-event space, EPIC marketing director Randy Withers said. He said the small rink has been covered with turf, too.

When the ice equipment in Overland Park failed, the Kansas City Stars youth hockey league was forced out of its home. League leaders and parents banded together to create Stars Facility Management LLC and took over management of Shawnee’s ice rink beginning March 1.

The move was not initially welcomed by some members of the Kansas City Junior Outlaws, who had been the only association based in Shawnee and feared they would lose their home ice.

Contracts for ice time have been under negotiation.

Although the idea is still under discussion, the Outlaws, the Stars, the Fighting Saints of Kansas City, Mo., and the Jr. Mavericks of Independence, Mo., are exploring forming a single, Kansas City-wide youth hockey association.

Tom Tilley, hockey director for the Stars, said such an agreement could influence whether Shawnee’s Kansas City Ice Center proceeds with building a second rink. Tilley said it’s unclear whether a merger could take effect before the upcoming fall hockey season, meaning scheduling ice time with a shortage of rinks is still an issue.

Home City Ice – News : Louisville Plant Earns Perfect NSF Audit

On May 17, 2011, the Home City Ice manufacturing plant located in Louisville, Kentucky was audited by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF). The location was Tested and Certified by NSF to the tune of a perfect score for the second consecutive year!!

This is the sixth perfect score for Home City Ice in the 2010-2011 audit season.

In the 2009-2010 audit season, the Home City Ice Company received eight of ten perfect scores in North America.

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