Welcome to the Ramsey County Board Workshop.

Today's workshop will be a presentation on the parts arena portfolio.

So again, Kurty, the reminder to everyone that this board uh workshop is recorded and live streamed on the Zoom webinar.

There will be no votes taken during this workshop.

And so let's uh do introductions.

I'm my chang, Ramsey County Commissioner for District 6.

I will be chairing this uh board workshop.

And I'd start this like that.

Commissioner Raphael and David district five.

Hello, Mary Joe McGuire, Commissioner District 2.

Tara Jevinsing, Commissioner District 1, reading Marine, Commissioner District 4.

Lynn Becker County Manager.

Mark McKay's production recreation director.

Liz Flynn, director of golf courses in Ice Renions.

Kelly Miller, Commissioner District 7.

On the Link.

Okay, my Benesha Half-Aron or ETC.

Lorena Space.

So this is director of UTCI.

I'm the director of planning and development and spending parts.

Gene property management.

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Can you just make this looking screen?

Okay.

Sleeping stage.

All right.

So I should say uh director Miguel Mead and um uh director uh thanks for putting this together.

I know that ice arenas have been um uh conversations as uh especially as it pertains to uh just being able to maintain our uh ice arenas overall and also switching to um some of the I don't know what the term is refrigerated um uh and uh I just really appreciate you um uh cutting it down about uh revenues or um where serving and taking a uh uh a look at a comprehensive look of our entire system uh together so that's what we're there for um uh you may go and then I'm sure that there will be uh questions that come up too.

So if you don't mind, we'll it's yeah there'll be conversation.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Zhang and Prophet Commissioners for your time today.

Uh Jen just want to start by thanking Liz Flanner, director of Army Isn't Golf for all the work she does just to oversee the system and so uh I'll likely be deferring to her for a lot of your questions.

And then uh also Gus Walmer, our planning development director, he's helps with a lot of capital project planning, uh things like that.

And then Tom Walk at the back of the room keeps the finances in order.

So team effort here to manage this portfolio.

Um and yeah, just as far as the purpose of having this workshop, um we wanted to see advanced slides to work the second at all.

Uh down the corner.

There we go.

Um yeah, we you know know that there's a mix of you know fairly recently elected commissioners, more tenured uh commissioners, and then taking a look at this opportunity to look at things comprehensively.

We've had questions during uh budget presentations and other workshops, and so just kind of taking a step back, like you said, to review review the overall portfolio, and then we're also trying to work on some strategic direction as we move forward to evaluate things and think about our long-term future.

We'll have um a lot of notes about the individual arenas, but you'll see that the majority of them were built in the mid-70s, and so here we are like 50 plus years later, and need to position position ourselves for the future and what we want to offer uh our community recreation.

So, first off, um just you know why we operate ice arenas, like what is the purpose of that, and I'd say the basic benefits and functions uh or a variety of things.

So addresses recreational need, we're living in Minnesota.

We get the opportunity to uh provide the service during the winter when a lot of people some people do like to go outdoors in the winter, a lot don't.

Um, when we think about uh indoor arenas versus outdoors, so Ramsey County operates these indoor ice arenas as opposed to outdoor ones.

There's a lot of uh municipalities that offer some ice sheets outside with climate change that's getting less and less um uh uh dependable to be able to operate those sort of facilities so people really do depend on that consistent uh products and uh service that we provide with having these indoor facilities.

Um, a lot of these facilities we've asked about hosting things other than ice hockey and figure skating, and so we'll walk through some of the other non-ice uses.

So a number of the facilities have multi-purpose use, and we'll go through what that looks like.

Um also revenue generating.

So I'll talk about this more in detail further in the presentation, but each of these facilities kind of operates like an independent business unit, and so their operational costs are charged to the individual arena along with the revenue that's collected for that arena, and we actually uh budget for more revenue than expenses in those facilities, and then utilize that in the department.

So we'll again talk about that more in detail.

And then finally, just the opportunity to like build community.

So we see again, not just uh things like uh tournaments that are happening for for hockey and the beginning of you know what ends up turning into state playoffs, but also things like uh graduation events at Aldridge Arena, um Olympic celebrations, culturally specific events, uh Latinx concert series among new year, farmers markets, weddings, and more.

So they really are these spaces that help to build community, create connections, and they're spread throughout the overall county.

So this is happening across the board.

And if you go into those facilities, you'll see decorations, um, you know, a lot of ownership from the users that uh primarily use these facilities, and so it really is like their kind of community hub that they take a lot of private.

So just stepping back and kind of taking a look at where are these facilities located?

So Ramsey County uh Parks and Rec operates uh 11 ice arenas with a total of 13 sheets of ice, and this slide illustrates uh the locations of these facilities.

There are seven of these arenas located within the city of St.

Paul and four within the suburban areas, so got that coordinated here, the US uh Commissioner Chid and Singh.