Prospera Place.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

Even though it is 24 years old, Prospera Place – home of the WHL's Kelowna Rockets – has solid “bones” and many years, or even decades, of life left in it. But it's in a dire need of some serious upgrades.

“The bones are fine,” Bruce Hamilton, president and general manager of the Rockets, told iNFOnews.ca. “It just needs to be brought into the new world.”

The arena was built in 1999 by a company now called the GSL Group as part of a public-private partnership with the City of Kelowna that runs until 2029.

READ MORE: 20 years later: How an arena helped transform downtown Kelowna

A former Rockets employee recently posted on social media that there was some thought, before COVID, of building a new arena in Rutland or in the Orchard Park area.

Hamilton didn’t know about that rumour but had heard some suggestion about building an arena at the Tolko Mill site a few blocks to the north of the current location.

Despite the building’s deficiencies, and the fact that GSL just filed an application to build three highrises in its parking lot, Hamilton has no interest in relocating and certainly not in moving away from downtown, if the building gets upgraded.

“If you look at all the new buildings in the league, they’re going up right down in the core,” he said.

Edmonton has moved downtown and Calgary is moving.

“Saskatoon built theirs in the worst place, way out by the airport,” Hamilton said. “It’s 15,000 seats and they’re right in the middle of talks of moving it downtown.”

While the new towers may result in the loss of 100 or more parking stalls at Prospera Place, fans are already using nearby parkades when they come to games because they want to go for a meal first and enjoy other downtown amenities, Hamilton said.

READ MORE: Parking at Prospera Place in Kelowna to be cut drastically if three highrises built

When the new UBC Okanagan tower is built, that will add more people who can simply walk to games. A number of other highrise towers are in the planning stages within easy walking distance of the arena.

“This thing was built and the cultural district built up around it,” Hamilton said. “When it was built, it was just an empty field. There was very little around here. The Grand (hotel) was here and the Dolphins (condos).”

Now there are the two towers of One Water Street across the street from the arena, the Ellis Parc highrise right beside it and the rapidly developing Clement Avenue area.

The age of the building is not an issue either.

“Spokane’s building is older that this one and it’s as nice a building as any in our league and that’s because they’ve upgraded it,” Hamilton said.

It was built four years before Propsera Place. The Sandman Centre in Kamloops is seven years older.

“We used to go to Kamloops and we used to laugh and say: ‘What a shitbox,’” Hamilton said. “Now it’s a Cadillac compared to this one. They’ve invested in it. They’ve upgraded it. They’ve shined it up.”

Portland has the oldest building in the league. It was built in 1960 and Hamilton said it looks like it’s going to get a major upgrade.

With its 6,886 seats, Prospera Place is also the right size.

“I would rather create demand than get extra seats,” Hamilton said. “It’s been shown, throughout our league, the teams that have gone to 7,000 or 8,000-seat buildings, it’s a tough challenge to fill them up. Ours, from a hockey perspective, is just fine the way it is.”

That is of course if it could be upgraded to qualify to host the Memorial Cup, the junior hockey championship for the Canadian Hockey League.

The Rockets hosted and won the Memorial Cup in 2004 and qualified to host it again in 2020 but the championship was cancelled because of COVID.

Since the Memorial Cup comes to the Western Division of the league only once every three years, the team’s next chance to host was 2023.

The Rockets didn’t even bid for the championship that year after a Feb. 20, 2022 ‘Prospera Place Assessment Report’ concluded that the facility did not meet new Memorial Cup standards.

The tournament went to Kamloops instead.

READ MORE: A tale of two arenas: Why Kamloops got the Memorial Cup and Kelowna didn’t

A 2021 engineering report by Stadium Consultants International showed the building was sound but needed some immediate attention. It recommended upgrades to things like dressing rooms, concessions and concert facilities in order to meet current trends for such facilities.

What’s needed to bring it up to Memorial Cup standards is a secret.

The 2022 study by Canadian Arena Services and VWMason Technology Consultants was commissioned by the Canadian Hockey League, the Kelowna Rockets and GSL Group Management.

iNFOnews.ca filed a freedom of information request in April of this year with the City of Kelowna in an effort to see what is in that report.

One of the parties – Hamilton suspects it was GSL – appealed the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to keep it from being released.

That inquiry was ended before any ruling was made because another organization, which had filed a freedom of information request before iNFOnews.ca, abandoned its application after learning it could take 18 to 24 months for the commissioner to reach a decision.

iNFOnews.ca was told this week that it now has to refile its freedom of information request, which it did. That means it could take two to three years for that report to be released, if it is released at all.

Whether any of the “immediate” fixes detailed in the 2021 report have been done is unclear.

The City told iNFOnews.ca to ask the Rockets or GSL.

GSL has not responded to repeated calls asking for information.

“I haven’t had any conversation with GSL,” Hamilton said this week. “They’ve never come back to us on anything.”

The lighting system was upgraded last year and, this summer, railings were installed on the stairwells. That’s something Hamilton has pushed to be done for years, given the high number of seniors who attend games.

He thinks that work was done by the city.

The Rockets’ next chance to host the Memorial Cup is 2026 but an application has to be filed by Jan. 31, 2025, which means upgrades need to be done reasonably early next year.

The City of Kelowna gets title to Prospera Place in 2029, whether any upgrades are done by GSL or not.

“I’m hoping I can have a meeting with the mayor, probably some time in October, to get an update on where they’re thinking they’re going or what the plan is because, it’s now into critical time for them,” Hamilton said.

“There’s now five years left and you’ve got to decide what you’re going to do. They can’t just take it over when the thing runs out and snap their fingers to have it brought up to standard. Some work has to be done before then.”

Mayor Tom Dyas is not talking about what the city might have in mind.

“Mayor says he has nothing to say on that for now,” an email from the City to iNFOnews.ca states.

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