Nickel: After rebounding from COVID-19 pandemic, the Pettit National Ice Center braces for a new challenge

The Pettit National Ice Center has rebounded nicely after quarantine, shutdown and the loss of fan revenue for the Olympic Trials. Now it faces another financial challenge: rising costs of gas.

But all things considered, executive director Randy Dean said that the 30-year-old nonprofit ice rink and oval, training center and community facility is in relatively good shape after taking a few financial hits during the two-year-long COVID-19 pandemic, with the first-ever drone races there last April and skating camps last week.

“It's been an unusual last couple of years, and I think we're finally returning to — hopefully — a sense of normalcy,” said Dean.

The pandemic in 2020 forced the Pettit to shut down like every other nonessential building in March 2020. It reopened later that summer, in stages and with limitations, but at least the two inner rinks were available for some hockey while athletes and employees followed all of the city of Milwaukee health protocols. When the Pettit closed out its fiscal year at the end of August, the net loss for the year was $93,000.

Even still, the Pettit upgraded its HVAC filter system for the best chance to minimize the spread of COVID among the athletes and employees and had no incidents, said Dean.

“We're turning the air over in the building every 30 or 40 minutes. That’s a lot of air to try to make it safe,” said Dean. “But this was the only sense of normal some of these youngsters had.”

With additional fundraising help and efforts from Bonnie Blair Cruikshank and husband Dave Cruikshank and supporters, the Pettit could afford to reinstall the ice oval, even if it was just a month or so later than usual, in October 2020.

“They didn’t want any of the speedskaters to miss any training, so they raised some money for that,” said Dean. “They did an extraordinary job of covering those costs and allowing speedskaters to at least experience a sense of normalcy and routine.”

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After a sort of normal 2021 season — public skating was very strong in the 2021-22 season as were the skating school numbers — the Pettit was poised to host the 2022 U.S. Speedskating Olympic Trials in the first week of January.

But the omicron variant of COVID-19 not only raised the infection rates in our area in January, hospitals were becoming full and care workers were treating patients at their max. Days before the trials, which were sold out for the main events at 1,400 fans a day, fans were told they could not attend. The sport’s governing body, US Speedskating, made the decision fans could not attend, but the trials could go on as planned, in the hopes of protecting the athletes.

It was a costly hit to the Pettit, which already invested $35,000 in preparation for the event that could not be canceled or refunded, and already sacrificed lost revenue of public skating and other hockey activities at the times of the trials that were canceled.

Officials asked fans to consider donating their ticket to the Pettit anyway, and about one-fourth of them did, said Dean, which helped offset costs. The other three-fourths of ticket holders were issued refunds.

Overall, it still led to an estimated $80,000 loss in ticket revenue for the trials, said Dean. US Speedskating helped by providing about $50,000 to cover the shortfall.

“That was helpful,” said Dean. “That it was a tough decision for US Speedskating to make. They stood by us and we appreciated that.”

Sponsors and donors of both speedskating and the Pettit also came through, which helped. Dean said the Pettit was hanging in there financially, even with plans for some internal renovations.

And some of those include being more efficient with energy costs with the help of Rockwell Automation.

Dean said that in addition to the cost of labor going up, the cost of natural gas costs tripling is already a concern, since they fuel the refrigeration system with both electricity and natural gas.

The Pettit is already near or over budget for electric and gas and well over costs of a year ago. Dean said he estimates natural gas alone will cost $100,000 more in the 2022-23 season.

“Rockwell has helped us with an operating system that allows us to be more precise in how we run the refrigeration and the HVAC and all those things,” said Dean. “So they’ve saved us a lot of money through the years of doing that.

"We'll just have to even tweak a little bit more, maybe run it a little bit colder with less heat in the winter. We'll see about how often we resurface and other things, too."

Dean said the Pettit was in good shape, and it will likely increase prices next year for public skating, but not much. After holding steady at $7.50 for eight or 10 years for adults, it might go up to $8.

“We try and keep it affordable,” said Dean. “That was the mission as a nonprofit, to serve the public with healthy programs and then to support speedskating.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: New challenge for Pettit National Ice Center after COVID-19 pandemic