Wichita Ice Center closed, no reopening date due to wait for parts

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The Wichita Ice Center is closed until further notice. The City of Wichita said the compressors failed last week.

The center’s Olympic Rink is concrete for the first time in four years due to these equipment issues.

“This is a major issue not just to my district but to the rest of the city. People are very frustrated with it,” said Wichita City Councilman Jeff Blubaugh.

The center was already planning on updating the current condensing tower in mid-August due to a lack of proper water treatment and maintenance in the years prior.

But the Kansas heat was a tipping point, causing the system to fail.

“To me, it tells me that it is not operating as it should because it should be able to handle triple-digit temperatures,” said Councilman Blubaugh.

The city said the center has dealt with several issues for the past few years but has been able to keep at least one sheet of ice working.

The Wichita City Council approved a bid for a new cooling tower in February costing about $238,000.

In a joint statement Monday, the Wichita Ice Center, City of Wichita, and Rink Management said quote:

“As announced last Thursday, the ice center compressors failed late afternoon on Wednesday, July 12th. The heat was not the only factor that caused the failure. As you may know, plans were in place to replace the current condensing tower in mid-August due to a lack of proper water treatment and maintenance in the years prior. With an already hurt and struggling system, the heat was just the tipping point. Our staff have been working with AMS (chiller professionals) to explore options to not only get the ice up quickly, but also what would be the most sensible option in an effort to greatly minimize the chance of this happening again. Unfortunately these are specialized parts that are not always readily available, and can result in a longer downtime than we would like. We can ensure that we will have the ice back up, however we just don’t want to announce a timeline that we have no control over. We will continue to keep our wonderful skating community up to date and appreciate the understanding.”

But these issues have canceled activities such as open skating, figure skating club, and hockey camps.

“You can’t just go between these long periods and messing up schedules they are preparing for competition. It is just very disingenuous and hard on those users of the ice arena,” said Councilman Blubaugh.

Councilman Blubaugh said he wants to see a more robust plan and design for the ice center to stop this from happening again.

The Wichita Ice Center’s website schedule shows events and activities canceled through Friday, but in their statement, they are not putting a timeline on reopening due to the wait for specialized parts they do not have control over.