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What are Vail’s priorities with the Dobson Ice Arena remodel?

With rising costs, Vail will have to determine what it wants to include in the redevelopment

With rising construction costs, the Vail Town Council will face tough decisions on what it has to replace, what it wants to maintain and what can merely be refreshed.
Ben Roof/Vail Daily archive

For months, the town of Vail has been building a plan for the remodel of Dobson Ice Arena. Leaving nothing out, the town’s project team crafted a schematic design that maximized the opportunity, including a new roof, locker rooms, bathrooms, sheet of ice, mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems, seating and space opportunities and more in its initial designs.

However, after bidding the project out to general contractors, the price tag for the full project came in at least $20 million over its $55.4 million budget.

At its Tuesday, March 5 meeting, Vail Town Council received an update on the project.



“I just want to address the $20 million issue right out of the gate,” said Chris Knight, the owner’s representative on the project from the Cumming Corp. “We knew that we were going in and we had built up schematic design documents with quite a bit of additional information so we could test the market and see how much we could possibly get out of our budget. And we got our answer.”

Town Council still has some time before it has to make any final decisions about what the project will ultimately look like. Still, the council members began discussing what elements of the proposed remodel they could live without, and what they couldn’t.

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The only official direction given following Tuesday’s discussion was for town staff to finish negotiating a preconstruction agreement with its top-ranked contractor for the project, Hyder/McHugh Construction.

According to Knight, the $20 million increase breaks down into two major categories: the first being the $10.9 million cost associated with the roof and the second being $7 million in “value engineering” or low-hanging fruit.

“We had increases across the board elsewhere that was leaving our roof structure replacement hanging out there,” Knight said, adding that the significant amount of work out there is driving construction costs up across the board right now.

The town staff has already begun working on a path back to its budget, presenting a few alternative redevelopment options for Dobson. These options will continue to be refined as the town completes negotiations with its general contractor and begins further studying and creating different remodel options. Staff is expected to return to council in six to eight weeks with the results of this work.

As part of the next update, council requested that staff return with information on the roof’s longevity, “a la carte” style pricing on different upgrades and improvements, on the service interruption of different remodel designs and more.  

What to do about the roof?

With the roof at the top of the cost list, it was a major point of discussion on Tuesday.

“It’s infinitely complex to replace the roof,” Knight said.

Throughout the design process, concerns have been expressed over the roof, with comments about it nearing the end of its useful life, concerns about its load-bearing capabilities (which has added maintenance requirements around shoveling and snow clearing during certain winters) as well as concerns that it does not meet current standards, code and rigging needs for event promoters.

At the same time, the roof’s wooden design has become part of the identity and draw of Dobson.

Amid the contractor bidding process, the town had its applicants’ present cost estimates for a steel roof and a hybrid roof between heavy timber and steel that would look similar to Dobson today. Both, according to Knight, carried a large cost in the pricing that came back.

A schematic design from Populous for a new roof at Dobson Ice Arena. But as costs come in, the town is wondering if it is worth replacing the roof at all.
Town of Vail, Populous/Courtesy Photo

Town Council was presented with remodel options that included and excluded replacing the roof. Council members were in agreement that keeping the roof as is might be OK, as long as the roof will last and doesn’t impact the future needs for the facility, specifically in terms of rigging capacity for larger events.    

Mayor Travis Coggin said that as long as the roof was structurally sound and met its rigging needs, it “is a cool piece of the facility that’s definitely worth keeping. We are looking at spending a lot of money to essentially recreate the same thing.”

Council member Dave Chapin said that this also comes down to understanding the longevity of the current roof. This is something the town does not have an answer for, yet.

“When we went into this and got our structural report about two to three years ago, it was: Is the roof falling down? The answer was, ‘No it’s not falling down, but it has significant capacity issues,'” said Greg Hall, Vail’s public works director. “We didn’t ask: How much longer can it last? Or, what kind of work do we need to put into that? That’s an answer we really need to bring back to you.”

Knight added that investigating this would be a big part of the project team’s next steps.

“The existing roof structure is iconic and if we can refresh Dobson and achieve most of the program options (without replacing it) — that to me, was a bit of a no-brainer,” Knight said. “We have been looking very heavily at what do we get out of replacing the roof and expanding the height and the area of that roof. The long-term play on that for seating is that you just don’t get a substantial amount of seating, even though you’re going through all of that.”

Looking at the roof’s future will include working with the project team as well as event promoters, building officials and structural engineers, Hall added.

What else is critical?

With a lot of question marks around the future of the remodel, Town Council expressed initial support for a stripped-down version of the remodel. Many council members agreed that this option would make a good starting point to build off of as it brings the general contractor on board.

Referred to as “Option F,” this option would leave the roof as is and replace the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems as well as the ice. As contemplated on Tuesday, this has an estimated cost of $34 million.

However, this option left out something that a few council and community members expressed was needed: upgrades to restrooms and locker rooms.

“In this day and age, you simply can’t do that,” said Council member Pete Siebert, adding that these needed to be included in any remodel plans from the start.  

Bob Armour, chair of the Vail Rec District board, appealed to council on these improvements as well.

“Those locker rooms are so far out of ADA compliance, they are so smelly, they are so trashy, I encourage somehow that we get those in there,” Armour said. “And I’m tired of having ladies and girls change in the loading docks. We need to do something with the locker rooms, please include them.”

Keeping the community in mind

No matter what Dobson includes in the future, there is pressure to get it right.

“There’s going to be some hard choices that have to be made here of what we want and what we can afford,” said Council member Reid Phillips.

“The current Dobson in its state right now — deferred maintenance, everything else that’s going on — it’s limping along. It still serves a huge amount of hockey players and some special events, but what I’d like to see and what I could support as a council member, is us building a budget that starts at that baseline and then we look at what it’s going to take and we can make those hard choices.”

 At the heart of its decisions needs to be community, Chapin said.

Alison Wadey, executive director of the Vail Chamber & Business Association, encouraged the council to not put limits on what the facility could be for everyone.

Laurie Mullen, chair of Friends of Dobson, emphasized that Dobson fulfills a need for two key demographics in town: its local, recreational uses and its destination market.

“When you’re looking at the opportunities and the options that you want to see next, let’s not lose an opportunity to do this right,” Mullen said.


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