Lillian Ney, who was on the Gebbie Foundation board during the planning of the arena, explained the importance of Northwest Arena is related to the “origin” of the ice arena.

Ney said the Gebbie Foundation board held a retreat in the late 1990s to consider how the foundation could make a significant difference in the community, particularly with regard to the revitalizing of Jamestown’s economy.

“At that time, the environment was a little bit somber,” she said. “There hadn’t been much going on, certainly not economic development wise at that time.”

Ney explained that it was “depressing” for the community to have empty buildings in the downtown region. She said many people in the community believed the “downtown of yesteryear” was going to return, despite the economy heading in the wrong direction.

Pictured are people walking in the rotunda during a tour of the ice arena during the grand opening.

“It was sort of a mood of no hope, and we recognized that and we talked a lot about that at the at the retreat,” she said. “We wondered what could be inspiring to the to the community, what would make them realize that something really could be done and what one thing would be kind of symbolic of change and inspiration and hope.”

Ney said the Gebbie Foundation believed that hope in the future of Jamestown could be inspired through a notable investment in the community. At the time, Ney said the Allen Park Ice Arena was “extremely well used” by the community due to the involvement of Olympic figure skating coaches and the rapid growth of both ice hockey and figure skating in Jamestown.

After discussions with the city and other local foundations, Ney said it was determined that Jamestown needed a new ice arena that could better accommodate the growing interest of the community.

“The Gebbie Foundation wanted to do something that was needed, not something out of the blue that would give hope, but something special that was actually needed by the community,” she said.

Ney said the project required an enormous amount of work by many different people. The planning phase of the arena required the partnership of local foundations, city officials such as former Mayor Richard Kimball and former Director of Development Sam Teresi and other community leaders. While both the design and construction phases of the arena project required a significant amount of collaboration between various agencies and partners, Ney explained the central goal of the collaboration was to provide hope and inspiration to the community.

Pictured are figure skaters on the ice arena during the grand opening of the arena.

“We hoped that would be inspirational to redevelopment in the downtown,” she said.

Ney said the economic development of the area surrounding the ice arena eventually led to the development of the first Urban Design Plan. To date, organizations such as the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation is carrying on the original mission of the Northwest Arena to reinvigorate downtown Jamestown and foster economic growth and development.

While Ney believes the overall impact of the arena has been immensely positive for the community, she said it took several years for the community to accept the major change in the downtown region.

“I’m not sure that they understood that it could really be of long-term benefit to the community,” she said. “Change is hard and new things are hard to be accepted. At that time, they wanted the restoration of the old downtown that was basically abandoned.”

Nevertheless, Ney said she believes the community has found numerous benefits from the Northwest Arena in the longer term. She explained that over time, the Northwest Arena has provided countless opportunities for figure staking, ice hockey, community group activities and a variety of events.

Looking to the future, Ney hopes the Northwest Arena will continue to inspire the community, especially as it recovers from the pandemic.

“I hope that recognition of the assets we have will give people courage,” she said. “I hope they can find a way to relate better to each other for the greater good. The isolation of COVID-19 has left people kind of depleted and not full of ideas anymore. The feeling now is similar to the kind of hopelessness for our downtown when we decided we needed to do something.”

Over the next 20 years, Ney believes the Northwest Arena will provide additional opportunities for the community to utilize the facility. She emphasized her personal hope that the arena could establish deeper connections with local school systems to provide more opportunities for disadvantaged children to enjoy the activities hosted at the arena.

Two decades after the construction of the arena, Ney believes the arena has accomplished the goal it was originally designed for.

“It’s welcoming to people and I pray that it’s an inspiration to the community,” she said. “I just feel that it was a good thing to do, and the Gebbie Foundation and the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation are trying to carry on with the revitalization that began here. It began with the arena. I just wonder what we would not have had if the arena wasn’t done. I think it was significant and I’m happy that it was done. I’m happy, in retrospect 20 years later, that I could be a small part of it.”

A LOCAL ‘SPARK’

Former Mayor Sam Teresi said Northwest Arena was the “spark” that ignited 20 years of redevelopment and revitalization in downtown Jamestown. While he said the community was hopeful at the time that the arena would have a substantial impact on Jamestown, he said the project was something that people weren’t “quite sure” could ever be successfully completed.

“The building still looks young and great after 20 years,” he said. “I think it’s still doing the job that we all had hoped it was going to be.”

Teresi said the intent of the Northwest Arena was for the ice arena to not only meet the local needs of the community regarding figure skating, ice hockey and other activities, but to be an attraction that would stimulate economic activity in Jamestown. By relocating the ice arena from Allen Park to the middle of downtown, Northwest Arena was intended to direct traffic toward the business community and promote a vibrant downtown experience that could benefit the whole community.

However, while the Northwest Arena project was something the city supported, Teresi said Jamestown would not have been able to develop the project without a community-wide effort.

“The city was financially not in a position to build a multi-million dollar recreational and development project with resources of its own or even going out and trying to get federal and state resources,” he said. “It really was going to take a community effort, and specifically people that were going to be users of the building and others that had access to non-governmental resources to help fund it.”

Teresi said the goal was to “shoot for the moon” by transforming the downtown region through a major investment project. 20 years later, he believes the Northwest Arena has addressed both the recreational needs of the community and prompted the development of numerous downtown projects.

According to Teresi, the arena “generated interest” in hotel development and restaurant development projects.

“I would say that this project was a good sound catalyst for other things to come along collectively over a period of time,” he said. “It was a big spark that created initiative, created vision and stimulated other investment projects in response to it. Maybe the biggest thing that it’s done over the years, it helped to rally people from various sectors of the community to achieve something big and significant.”

In addition to the economic impact the Northwest Arena has had on the community, Teresi said the project taught community leaders to work together to “achieve big things.” While he admitted the project was not easy and faced multiple challenges along the way, he said the partnership between the Gebbie Foundation, the city and other community partners helped pave the way for the arena to initiate “measurable benefits” for Jamestown residents.

“We all got together, and we achieved the goal,” he said. “It was a huge statement that taught us if we could work together pulling this one off, consider what we might be able to do on other fronts. It was a huge statement that I think spawned a belief that we could build upon this and make other good projects and big things happen. That is exactly what’s happened over the past 20 years.”

COMMUNITY CENTER

Keith Martin is the current executive director of Northwest Arena. While Martin has only been at the arena for four years, he has a deep appreciation for how the arena has grown into a community center in Jamestown.

Martin said the importance of Northwest Arena is how it has become a community center that is utilized by people of all ages from all walks of life.

“It’s not just for figure skating or ice hockey anymore,” he said. “It is for all ages, which is so wonderful. Moving forward in the next 20 years, it’s only going to grow even more with the development of The Zone.”

The addition of The Zone is something Martin believes will bring additional visitors to the Northwest Arena. Martin is hopeful that The Zone could be completed sometime in 2023. Martin emphasized the importance of continuing to provide a space for the “young people” of the Jamestown community to utilize.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “The energy that is in the building each and every day I walk in, it’s just so wonderful. This venue is turning into that community center that it was supposed to be 20 years ago.”