The Anaheim Ducks and San Diego Gulls are in discussions with the city of Escondido to build a three-rink ice sports complex that would serve as a training and practice home for the American Hockey League team.<\/p>\n
The City of Escondido and the Rinks Foundation will announce on Thursday that they plan to bring a memorandum of understanding to the Escondido City Council to explore the feasibility of developing the facility.<\/p>\n
The proposal will be presented at Wednesday\u2019s Escondido City Council meeting.<\/p>\n
The Gulls\u2019 new facility would be similar to Irvine\u2019s Great Park Ice and the Five Point Arena built by the NHL\u2019s Ducks in 2019.\u00a0 It would become the largest ice sports complex in San Diego County. The Gulls have practiced at Poway ICE, a single-rink, multi-use facility, since it opened in 2016.<\/p>\n
The new facility would be fully funded by the Rinks Foundation, which was created by Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli. The Samuelis also own the Gulls, who serve as the NHL club\u2019s top minor-league affiliate.<\/p>\n
The proposed project includes three ice sheets \u2014 including a main rink that will seat between 2,000 and 3,000 fans \u2014 as well as locker rooms and strength and conditioning and nutrition facilities. The proposed complex would also host youth and high school hockey programs, adult recreational leagues, sled hockey programs, figure skating programs, public skating sessions and various other ice activities.<\/p>\n
Similar-sized facilities around the country have hosted major high school and college tournaments as well as figure skating and other ice sports competitions.<\/p>\n
If approved, the proposed facility could take approximately three years to build.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of community engagement we\u2019ve been able to create with Great Park has been over the moon, and we\u2019re looking to replicate that in Escondido,\u201d said Ducks chief executive officer Aaron Teats, who has helped guide similar projects in his 32 years with the club. \u201cNot only can we bring a first-class training facility to the Gulls, we can also create something that will benefit the entire San Diego ice sports community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Escondido had been home to Ice-Plex Escondido, a two-rink facility that closed in 2020 after 25 years due to financial constraints heightened by the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Anaheim Ducks and San Diego Gulls are in discussions with the city of Escondido to build a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-336234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}