With council vote delayed, Fort Dupont Ice Arena renovation veers back to solid footing
Nearly 45 children crowd the ice on a typical Saturday morning at Fort Dupont Ice Arena on Ely Place SE in Ward 7. Groups of kids divide between coaches at different ends of the rink and perform drills in their almost overlapping groups.
It’s an on-ice indication of the facility’s limits that led the DC government to allocate $15 million in 2014 for the facility’s expansion and DC Council members to add another $10 million in 2017. Under the arrangement, the 14-member board of Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena that operates the facility was tasked with generating an additional $5 million, though the amount that’s needed and the project’s overall cost are uncertain even as fundraising efforts continue.
Though planning for the project has progressed in the past four years, a sudden debate over competing capital budget priorities emerged in late January, putting the project in doubt over the past week and a half. The issue arose after Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed shifting $21 million in unspent funds to fund “critical maintenance issues” in public schools, recreation centers and parks.
Amid a high-profile lobbying and a new fundraising effort initiated by the Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, however, the project appears to be back on solid footing.
An expected showdown at today’s DC Council meeting dissipated after legislators, the city administrator and Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena representatives agreed on Monday to continue discussing a potential solution, putting off a key vote until Feb. 19.
Ward 7 Council member Vincent Gray said at Tuesday’s council meeting that a tentative agreement calls for putting sufficient funds for the Fort Dupont project in a “lockbox.” Doing do, Gray said, avoids the need for legislators to make what he termed an “incredibly difficult” choice: preserve the funding for a second ice rink at Fort Dupont, or provide needed maintenance money for a host of DC public schools, parks and recreation facilities.
“This has been an incredible ordeal,” said Gray, who provided the original funding for the project when he was mayor. “With the meeting yesterday, I think we have helped to carve a path forward.”
The Friends group was also optimistic, telling its supporters that there was no longer a need to turn out en masse for today’s council meeting. In an announcement posted Monday night on its website and disseminated on Twitter, leaders said “our rink has been saved,” with the delayed council vote allowing time for the parties to agree on a design, to confirm the board’s fundraising commitment, and to schedule availability of the funding and a construction schedule.
“We are cautiously hopeful going into the process that the [Executive Office of the Mayor] and Council will truly engage to move our project forward on behalf of the kids and families promised a new rink,” Patrice Willoughby, a Friends of Fort Dupont board member, wrote in an email.
In a Jan. 25 letter to DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Bowser defended her request to use the Fort Dupont funding to help address $54.9 million in needs at schools, parks and recreation facilities. The largest chunk of the money would go toward heating, ventilation and air conditioning repairs in DC schools.
“These facilities, across all 8 wards, have urgent maintenance, flooding, heating and cooling issues that must be addressed with small, focused capital investments,” the mayor wrote. “Without these capital investments, the District will continue to spend millions in maintenance dollars every year addressing deteriorating conditions through inefficient ‘band-aids’ rather than replacing building systems and equipment that are well beyond their useful lives.”
The recipients would include up to six projects in each ward.
Activism for the ice
When they learned of the mayor’s budget reprogramming request, the project’s backers mobilized with a “#savethefort” campaign on social media and an online petition asking Bowser to reconsider. As of Tuesday afternoon, just over 1,700 people had added their signatures.
Over the weekend, the Washington Capitals brought increased attention to the issue, even flashing a message during a game at Capital One Arena about a nascent crowdfunding campaign to raise $500,000 to help with the renovation project. The GoFundMe drive has so far raised $330,970, most of it from $100,000 donations from Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the National Hockey League and the Leonsis family.
The mayor’s proposed reprogramming would have taken effect automatically on Feb. 11, but Gray stopped the clock temporarily by filing emergency legislation on Jan. 31 to reject the mayor’s proposal. The council now has until Feb. 26 to reject the reprogramming.
Although city officials contend the Fort Dupont project didn’t need the funding immediately — and that it could be restored without delaying the renovation’s groundbreaking — Gray expressed doubts about whether the hard-won funding would in fact rematerialize.
“There’s no way I can support taking $20 million from an ice arena who will never see it again,” Gray said in an interview on Friday. Even without the amount now set aside for the Fort Dupont renovation, he noted, the mayor would still have $34 million to spend on the needed school and park modernization projects.
In brief comments at today’s meeting before he withdrew the disapproval measure until Feb. 19, Gray reiterated the quandary that the mayor’s proposal created.
“I certainly support our schools, yet at the same time we have a treasure and a gem,” Gray said. “And that is the Fort Dupont Ice Arena. [It] would have had to forego all of its funding in order to do something that we all consider hugely important, and that is supporting the continuing modernization of our schools.”
Long-delayed project
Fort Dupont parents, staff and coaches all say that the 1970s-era facility needs and deserves the expansion money, which would fund the addition of a second sheet of ice. A second rink would eliminate the need for waiting lists and give every interested child a chance to skate, supporters say.
The rink serves 3,000 children annually, and all of the arena’s volunteer-led programs — speed, synchronized and figure skating as well as hockey — are filled to capacity. “Although we try to serve as many people as we can, there’s no way for these programs to grow if we don’t have an expansion,” said Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena board member Billy Bryant, a hockey coach who used the arena growing up.
Board members emphasize that they never turn away a child because a family can’t pay. Many students take lessons for free or with subsidies from the arena, they said. About 62 percent of the students in Fort Dupont-operated programs are African-American.
College and private schools such as Gonzaga College High School and The Catholic University of America also pay to use the ice for hockey practice, subsidizing the cost of Fort Dupont’s own programs.
The rink is also home to the Fort Dupont Cannons, the oldest African-American hockey team in the nation.
Board members characterize the expansion project as marked by delays and disputes among DC Department of Parks and Recreation officials, board members, design teams and consultants. Saying that they were excluded from the project’s working group, board members contend the city’s design is extravagant and has unnecessarily pushed the budget beyond its original $25 million price tag — one of the factors they believe led to the reprogramming.
Reactions to funding challenges
To hear what they consider self-made delays cited as justification to reprogram the funds annoys many of the project’s backers, but others say it’s particularly upsetting to be pitted against schools in a battle for funding.
“It’s sad that DC’s thinking that we are competing with the schools,” said Puneet Sanhi, whose two children skate at the arena. “This is complementing and supplementing the schools.” Sanhi said his children’s assignments from Fort Dupont classes include writing and illustrating stories.
“I just want them to give the same priority to the rink that they’ve given to the libraries across the city, to the schools across the city,” said Marcea Cork, another Fort Dupont parent. “We’ve seen all of these buildings improved in the past 10 years — and what type of growth and development have we seen at this rink?”
Many former students and coaches say that Fort Dupont remains an influence throughout their lives. Board member John Cotten said his son learned to skate at the rink when he was 6 years old. His participation in ice hockey helped him get into college and led to a professional career in Germany and a coaching job at Gonzaga, Cotten said.
“I looked at the opportunity that it gave my son to live a dream, to express something different,” Cotten said. “I made a promise to myself that this opportunity that he had, I will ensure that it is available for any other kid in this community.”
Gabby Francis, a current student whose sisters also use the rink, started skating at Fort Dupont when she was 5 years old and signed up for the synchronized team in fifth grade. She believes a second rink would give skaters more room to breathe on the ice. “My team — it’s not the only team that’s out there on the rink. There’s three of us,” she said.
For Francis, the experiences at Fort Dupont have offered lessons in teamwork and leadership. “[Skating] makes me feel happy,” she said. “It makes me feel right at home.”
Chris Kain contributed to this report.
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