Lakeland’s soon-to-open first ice arena will be all brand new.
Excerpt for all of its tables, benches and bar tops that mark a place in history; the new owners repurposed all 40 wooden lanes of the bowling alley that used to occupy the building.
Tons of steel was used to secure the heavy lanes to their new homes.
The story goes like this: Mr. Joe Blanton, a former president of Publix Super Markets, built the bowling alley for his bowling-enthusiast daughter, Kay.
Lakeland Ice Arena and its owners wanted to represent the history of the building by using each of the 40 lanes in the former bowling alley as materials for his new ice rink and they did.
Granville said, “The coolest one is the one that we call our center ice table, which is our largest table in the building,”. “It’s made of lane 21, which is the lane that Kay Blanton Wentworth got married on. So, we kept as close center ice as we could and I made a table out of it.” Kay’s husband favorite lane was lane 22 which is next to Kay’s lane as a table in the middle of the building also.
Granville told the Lakeland Gazette he anticipates opening the weekend after Labor Day but is not declaring an exact date or whether public skating will be offered yet when it opens. Click here to check out our website for more details.
They also have an agreement with the NHL / Tampa Bay Lightning to provide 14,000-square-foot outdoor pavilion and an outdoor ball-hockey rink. The Tampa Bay Lightning signed an agreement to host programming in Lakeland, including instruction on skating and hockey.
Granville said. “We wanted to bridge the gap between Tampa and Orlando by bringing an arena to Lakeland.”
Granville said transforming a bowling alley to an ice arena has been fun from day one. A lot of the areas in the 50,000-square-foot building are large enough to create spaces that can accommodate all of his ideas. Some of those ideas, on the verge of fruition, include:
- Multiple locker rooms, one for the referees
- An embedded pro shop called Rinkside Sports that sells equipment
- An indoor ball-hockey room
- Two conference slash party rooms
- A concession stand called Sweet Tooth and Stanley’s Pizza
- An American-food restaurant called Celly’s
- A game room, a full bar, which will seat 120.
The arena will be home to in-house recreational hockey and travel hockey, including the Lakeland Royals and the George Jenkins High School teams.
George Jenkins High School will be playing its first hockey home game after having a team for 15 years.
The arena also will be home to Florida Southern College’s new hockey team, which will be coached by Lakeland Ice Arena’s hockey director, Gilles Richard.
Lakeland Ice Arena has a fan zone viewing area specifically for Florida Southern College fans called Snakepit!!!
Florida Southern College men’s ice hockey has been granted membership into the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), the national governing body of non-NCAA ice hockey. The ACHA currently consists of more than 450 teams in five divisions, including three men’s and two women’s divisions, and has a total of 12 teams in the state of Florida.
The FSC Mocs will have their own dedicated locker room just for them, and their games will be played on Saturday nights. First Mocs game is set for Sept 28 at 2 pm vs USF Click Here news and schedules
Within the next 12-months Granville will be breaking ground on the permanent home next door for the Mocs.
2020 Battle On the Beach January 18-20 2020
