Arena Name: Waterloo Memorial Arena Capacity: 2,000 Built: 1947 Last Hurricanes Game: 1952 Used by the Rangers: Intermittently Demolition Started: 1987 Demolition Finished: 2001 Address: 31 Caroline St. N., Waterloo Ontario Waterloo Memorial Arena opened its doors as the main arena in Waterloo in 1947. It was home to the OHA briefly in the early 1950s, as the Waterloo Hurricanes began play in 1950 and ceased two short years later. The arena later became known for being the home of the junior B Waterloo Siskins, who have been a part of the fabric of the city for generations. The neighbouring big boys, the Kitchener Rangers, also played intermittently in Waterloo in the 1960s, 70s and 80s during occasions when the city-owned Memorial Auditorium was booked up with other tenants. The city of Waterloo never properly maintained the building though, and by 1987 the building was condemned as structurally unsafe. The city complied by tearing down half of the building, as the grandstands, ice-making equipment, front facade and dressing rooms were all kept while the unsafe roof was torn down. Then - and here is where the story moves from the ridiculous to the sublime - the exposed part of the building was surrounded by a giant inflated kevlar bubble. The city then continued as if nothing at all was amiss about having their main arena partially demolished while still hosting a full schedule of hockey games. The Waterloo Memorial Rec Complex opened next door in 1993 and the Siskins moved into the new building, but ice shortages in the city of Waterloo forced the old facade and bubble to stay open until 2001, when the building was finally put out of its misery. In a final note of delicious irony, the property was redeveloped as the world-renowned Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where geniuses from around the world contemplate slightly less weird things than enclosing half an old arena in a bubble.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 23:37:54 +0000
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