With new rink, Rosemont hopes to become ‘epicenter’ for hockey families

It’s been eight years since the first faceoff at the Papanicholas family’s indoor rink in Mount Prospect, but they’ve kept looking for additional places to lay down more sheets of ice.

“(Hockey) is a growing sport, and it’ll continue to grow as the facilities have the ability to allow it to grow,” said Nick Papanicholas Jr. of Nicholas & Associates Inc., the development firm behind big building projects in the suburbs: public schools and police stations, private residential and retail mixed-use projects, and, increasingly, ice rinks.

The family’s interest in the latter started under patriarch Nick Sr., who wanted to find a closer place for his grandchildren’s club hockey team to play. His adaptive reuse of a vacant commercial building in Mount Prospect’s Kensington Business Center as an indoor ice arena — now called the Nicholas Sportsplex — took less than six months. He passed away just months after the ice rink opened in 2016.

Now, his four children are carrying on that legacy — on a construction schedule nearly as aggressive — with a planned $34.5 million, 103,000-square-foot ice rink just north of the Allstate Arena in Rosemont.

Crews broke ground Thursday — a day after the village board inked a construction contract with Nicholas & Associates — with the goal of making the two, 200-by-85-foot rinks available to the Chicago Wolves, youth and adult hockey leagues, and figure skaters by August 2025.

Rosemont is paying to build the facility, as well as another $1.3 million to remediate soil in an area where a series of interconnected light industrial buildings were purchased and torn down by the municipality.

Under a separate agreement set to come before the village board next month, Nicholas will pay the village an annual licensing fee to operate the year-round facility. And both parties will also be able to sell naming rights and sponsorships inside and outside the building.

The 10- to 15-mile radius around O’Hare International Airport is “the epicenter of where families want to be for hockey,” said Papanicholas Jr., who also is talking with Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson about building a rink on the other side of the airport.

In the shadow of planes landing at the airport and with an exit off the Jane Addams Tollway at Lee Street, the new Rosemont ice center also could draw regional and national hockey tournaments, Papanicholas said.

There are a number of rinks scattered throughout the area: Bensenville, Franklin Park, Niles, Glenview, Northbrook, Rolling Meadows, Vernon Hills, Glen Ellyn, Carol Stream, Geneva, Willowbrook, Woodridge and Darien, to name a few. But Papanicholas believes there’s demand for up to another half-dozen sheets of ice in the Northwest suburbs and DuPage County alone.

“You can’t put 8-year-olds and 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds on the ice at midnight. That’s just not normal,” Papanicholas said. “It’s not good for their education and their psyche. You need to have them in a normal rotation. There’s only so much prime ice to go around … So, if we add additional new facilities throughout the Northwest suburbs, the demand is there. The sport could continue to grow.”

Youth hockey groups are expected to get the prime times at the new Rosemont rink — after school and in the evenings on weekdays, plus weekend mornings. Adult men’s and women’s leagues will get ice time after 10 p.m. every day. The Wolves — who now practice in Hoffman Estates and play across the street at the Allstate Arena — will get exclusive use of one of the two new rinks during the day.

As many as 10 hockey clubs are expected to enter into ice user agreements with the Nicholas subsidiary that will manage the facility. About 20 organizations use the company’s sportsplex in Mount Prospect.

The Rosemont venue will have a mezzanine-level restaurant where diners will be able to watch games on both rinks. A name or concept hasn’t been announced, but the Mount Prospect location is home to Big Fish’s Icehouse, which has a full bar and serves wood-fired pizza, salads and sandwiches.

The new building also will have office space for Wolves coaches, the Chicago Mission youth hockey club, and a physical therapy clinic.