MacAdam: New Union hockey rink would be less than mile away, but plans still way down the road

SCHENECTADY – That smash was the sound of a vehicle wiping out the open driver-side door of a pickup truck parked along the street.

I was walking off Lenox Road and through the small lot that leads to the service door behind Messa Rink to cover a Union College men’s hockey game on a dark winter night a few years ago.

Come to a Union hockey game, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. You might even get your car door ripped off by a passing vehicle before the opening faceoff.

“DID YOU NOT SEE … ?!?!” came bellowing from the road behind me, and I didn’t stick around for the rest, but you can probably use some imagination and fill in the blanks.

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The concept isn’t the hard part.

I went back to Messa on Saturday night to watch Union play Route 7 rival RPI, and was reminded that back in April, the news Union hockey fans have been anticipating for years dropped that there was finally movement afoot to build a new rink.

Nothing against lovable Messa, but if you’ve gone to a Dutchmen game there, you know there are challenges not faced by people attending sporting events at most other venues, even high school games, with all the basic amenities.

All that good stuff – parking, comfortable seating, plentiful and fresh restrooms and concessions – would be readily available at the new rink that has been proposed on the grounds of Rivers Casino and Resort at Mohawk Harbor down the road. And if you’re a Union fan, it’s easy to picture yourself settling in for a game at a sparkling new state-of-the–art arena.

What’s not so easy, of course, is making all this happen from a development and financing standpoint. As Union athletic director Jim McLaughlin said by phone Sunday morning, “As we look, these projects take a long time.”

When officials and representatives of various involved partners told us Union men’s and women’s hockey home games would be moved to a new rink at nearby Mohawk Harbor, the universal reaction by all who care about these programs had to be, “Yes … Finally.”

But while this project seems bound to happen, there is still no definitive timeline to a finished product, while the process of figuring out how to pay for it grinds away behind the scenes.

I was the Union hockey beat writer in 2017 when the Dutchmen faced Penn State in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament, and part of that story was how the Penn State program had sprouted and risen out of seemingly bare ground, moving up to Division I as recently as 2012-13.

In fact, a high-profile Penn State alum, Terry Pegula, a billionaire who owns the Buffalo Sabres and co-owns the Buffalo Bills with his wife Kim, stepped in with $102 million to build a 6,000-seat ice rink, named after him, on campus in Happy Valley in 2010.

Design renderings of the new $1.4 billion (with a “b”) Bills stadium came out a few days ago, to which there was much rejoicing.

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Terry Pegula isn’t walking through that service door at Messa Rink.

A substantial component of arena financing, as it is with any sports and entertainment venue these days, is securing naming rights. McLaughlin said no company has been approached yet on that front because the involved parties – the city of Schenectady, the Metroplex Development Authority, the college and Galesi Group, which donated the land for the project and is serving as developer – are still formulating what the naming rights part of it needs to look like.

“We want to try to finalize terms in a deal, then start those pieces,” McLaughlin said. “We know ballparks of what naming rights can bring and what other areas can bring, so that part will come after we can finalize a deal [proposal].”

In April, New York state passed a budget that included $10 million in funding for the arena, at the request of Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam.

Union College president David Harris said at the time that the arena, which would be available to other groups and events besides being Union hockey’s home rink, could cost a total of $40-50 million.

Over six months later, with that number not yet fulfilled and naming rights still up in the air, McLaughlin said, based on a typical two-year period devoted just to the design and building of the facility, “Ideally – ideally – we’d love to be in there for the 2024-25 season, if not the start, at least some part of it.”

“Funding in capital projects is always going to be a piece of it,” he said. “It’s been a really good partnership in our conversations. We’re hopeful to be able to finalize and push this past the goal line soon.

“Obviously, that’s [naming rights] a big piece of what we’ve been talking about, how to monetize all of the facets of this rink, including naming rights. What we want to do is be able to finalize a deal and then go out with what we think will be a very attractive opportunity to a number of local organizations.”

Union, naturally, wants to translate the attractive parts of the Messa experience to the new rink, which has plans for a little bit of an increase in seating capacity, to 2,850, while offering some standing-room spots on a concourse level.

“Hearing some other teams that have come in here and played, some non-league folks, like the North Dakotas and BUs and hearing from their students about what a special place Messa is to play, with the dome and the noise and all of those things, that’s critically important,” McLaughlin said. “It’s one of the reasons we’re not looking at a huge facility. We want to make sure we can fill it and create a very similar atmosphere in a facility that’s slightly bigger than Messa is right now.”

Messa was just as we’ve come to expect it when I went to the game on Saturday, wonderfully loud and sort of claustrophobic for the teams in front of a full house of just 2,225 fans in the small circular building next to Frank Bailey Field.

It’s a different experience than you get at RPI’s Houston Field House, which drew a corresponding sellout crowd of 4,600 the previous night.

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“The energy in both buildings is a lot fun to be a part of,” said Union first-year head coach Josh Hauge, who has also coached as the enemy in both buildings when he was an assistant at Clarkson. “It makes it [Houston] a difficult place to play, anytime you’re going on the road and it’s a packed house. The same can be said for us when we have a packed building, that our guys have a little more jump in their step.

“The sound really carries in this rink. It’s a pretty big advantage, and a lot of fun, how loud the building is.”

Hauge was hired by Union right around the same time as the announcement that a new rink was coming.

He said that prospect brought added appeal to the job, but he’ll be just as content playing home games at Messa for the indefinite future.

“I had coached here so many times and loved the atmosphere and the energy in this building that I’m more than comfortable and happy here,” he said. “If we have a chance to get a new building that has some extra bells and whistles, I think it would be exciting.”

Moving Union’s home ice down Nott Street to the river would also add another layer to Mohawk Harbor’s broadening identity as not just a casino and housing development, but a sports and entertainment venue.

They’ve hosted boxing and MMA; organizers of a swimming complex that could accommodate 1,200 spectators continue their grind for funding; and two new road races, the Electric City 5-Miler in March and Miles on the Mohawk in May, are based at Mohawk Harbor.

“We continue to engage in ongoing and very promising conversations with the city, Metroplex, Galesi and Mohawk Harbor,” McLaughlin said. “All of us want to see this happen, knowing the benefits it’s going to provide to our hockey programs, the city, Mohawk Harbor development and all those things.

“Conversations are promising. We don’t have an exact timeline. We are hopeful to make real progress quite quickly.”

In the meantime, Messa Rink, which opened as Achilles Rink in 1975 (when I was 13 years old, shut up) will continue to be the familiar face of Union hockey games.

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I stopped parking for games on Lenox Road after the guy got his car door destroyed, choosing much-less-busy Douglas Road, which connects Lenox to Wendell Avenue amidst the grand old houses in the General Electric Realty Plot.

On Saturday, I asked a long-time season ticket holder I recognized, who chose to remain anonymous, what he thought of the prospect of a new Union hockey arena at Mohawk Harbor.

“Where’s the parking?” he said with a chuckle. “Just put that in there.”

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