The ice-rink cometh: Developers finally 'very comfortable' with where Tuggeranong project is up to

The developers of Tuggeranong’s long-awaited ice rink have confirmed it’s still coming but added there’s been little to announce, given the work over the past 12 months has been “about as interesting and captivating as watching paint dry”.

ACT Labor first promised the Canberra Arena in the lead-up to the 2020 election, in partnership with investment company Cruachan and its development partner Pelligra.

To be built on Rowland Rees Crescent in Greenway in the Tuggeranong Town Centre, it was heralded as the new home for Canberra’s ice sport athletes, including national ice hockey champions, the CBR Brave, with space for 3600 spectators.

It would feature two international-standard ice sheets for figure skating, broomball, speed skating, and ice hockey, as well as a first for Australia – curling sheets.

There would also be an indoor rock-climbing facility for all three Olympic disciplines of lead, speed and bouldering.

In 2023, the government agreed to throw $16 million into the $40 to $50 million project and sign a heads of agreement partnership with Cruachan and Pelligra.

And the last we heard of it was in the lead-up to the 2024 election when Chief Minister Andrew Barr said there were some “legal behind-the-scene company arrangements” that were being finalised

“Yes, it has taken longer than the government would have hoped,” he said.

“We’ve released the land and made the budget allocation … we look forward to a development application being lodged sooner rather than later.”

The government’s Built for CBR website still lists the project as being in the “Planning and design” stage with a “due date” of 2025, but regulars of Tuggeranong will know nothing appears to have changed at the site.

According to Cruachan director Stephen Campbell, this is because “we’ve done all the hard work that’s largely invisible to people”.

“I understand there are some frustrations, particularly from ice-sports users who wanted it yesterday, and because they see large time gaps, they don’t feel that anything is being done when, in fact, there’s a lot of work that has been done,” he says.

“It’s just not really sexy and not something that you can go out and report on because it doesn’t really mean anything to anybody.”

Basically, the owners want to get their design work “up to 75 per cent complete” before they file a development application with the government, and a lot of the hold-up has to do with changes to the ACT’s tree protection laws last year.

“We’ve undertaken some different mapping studies to look at how we can use the site’s footprint with the most minimal impact to existing vegetation on the land, and we did that because of some changes to the Urban Tree Act,” Mr Campbell says.

“As a consequence, that required us to do some additional modelling work.

“That has been presented back to the ACT Government … and we’ll then move to the next stage, which is really getting to that very pointy end of the project where we put in a development application.”

He says the initial 2025 completion date “may have been a little premature in hindsight”, but “now we’re very comfortable with where the project is up to”.

Provided there are no “unforeseen hold-ups”, he expects the DA to be approved and construction to start in the last quarter of 2025.

The artistic renders released for public consultation during that process will also look a little different from what we first saw.

“It’s a challenging site in terms of the number of trees, but also the slope and water runoff, so the final design will ultimately have to consider all those elements,” Mr Campbell says.

“And then on top of that, of course, the entire construction environment has changed quite dramatically in the last four years – building costs are not what they were four years ago … We really need to look at how we can innovatively use current technologies to minimise the overall cost.”

In a statement to Region, the government said the Canberra Arena remains “one of the government’s sports infrastructure priorities”.

“The project has been progressing step-by-step, with Cruachan and Pelligra working on early design concepts for the facility, and a range of site investigation works have also recently been undertaken, and relevant approvals are currently being sought,” the spokesperson said.

“We look forward to providing further updates in the coming months.”