The future of hockey in Lapeer County may be in doubt.
And it didn't have to be that way.
Out of seemingly nowhere Monday, the website of Lapeer's County Press dropped a major bombshell: after nearly 20 years, the rink and accompanying bar Louie's Sports Tavern will be shutting down for good at the end of April. The unnamed author of the article went on to cite "social media, online gaming and other sedentary activities" as reasons the owners couldn't make the hockey arena viable.
Now, when one considers that County Press and Lapeer Area View owner Rick Burrough is also co-owner of the Polar Palace and Louie's, it makes a bit more sense why they would be first to announce this news, before even the venue itself.
Of course, as one would expect given that the paper and the arena share a common co-owner, the article conveniently glosses over the fact that the experience on the restaurant side has always has been
lackluster at best. Your not-so-humble correspondent can personally attest to multiple issues over the years with consistency and quality of the food served, a promotion the venue failed to deliver on altogether when it didn't get quite the response it hoped for, and any number of nights where, even when the place was at half or less capacity, you might wait twenty to thirty minutes for a server to acknowledge your existence, and up to an hour just for appetizers.
This is where one might hope that the place could yet get a new lease on life. That with proper management running the show, both the bar and the arena could thrive again.
Enter Drake MacKenzie, a self-described "local boy" who is as much a true believer in Flint and Lapeer as viable hockey markets as anyone you'll find. And he's putting his money where his mouth is.
A Lapeer native, MacKenzie is the commissioner of the upstart Interstate Hockey League, a 12-team low-level minor hockey league scheduled to launch this fall. One of those twelve teams, the Lapeer Nepessings, was slated to play at the Polar Palace starting in November. He'd just agreed to a lease the week prior which would have committed the Nepessings to two years of playing their games at the arena and resulted in sorely needed upgrades being made to the rink.
MacKenzie, 24, admittedly seems an unlikely person to represent the
potential future of hockey in Lapeer County. He is, by his own admission, loud and abrasive, and his propensity to chirp at
opposing players, teams, even leagues, has not diminished any as he's
moved from the ice to the front office. It's fair to say he's not
exactly universally liked. As he sits in the Solid State Radio studio
the day the announcement came down, he shows me texts and messages he's
received from players in the rival Federal Hockey League mocking the
news of his hometown arena's closure. But none of that seems to have deterred him from his vision of Lapeer as a hockey hotbed. "This is a great sports town, a great community."
So when the announcement came that his hometown would be losing its home ice, MacKenzie sprung into action, spending most of Monday afternoon in contact with management and ownership of the venue, hoping to save hockey in Lapeer County. He says there is an offer on the table from his group to lease the building, and potentially purchase it outright within a year or two.
But Rick Burrough wants no part of that. "He wants to sell to a company for a warehouse," MacKenzie laments.
Of course, the loss of the county's only hockey arena has ramifications that reach far beyond the loss of a professional hockey team, a fact not lost on MacKenzie.
"The thing that is sad, is that this is the death sentence for Lapeer High School hockey. That is the death sentence, probably, for Alliance," the hockey team consisting of players from Almont, North Branch, Dryden, Lakeville, Imlay City, and Goodrich, towns that no longer have enough players to fill out hockey teams of their own. "Lapeer's girls program went to the states this year, their youth program. For a second or third-year program, they've made tremendous strides. There had to be forty girls out there, which is something you would have never seen. What happens to them?"
Certainly the Polar Palace holds a special significance to MacKenzie. "I scored my first goal there. My dad laid down the first sheet of ice there. I learned to skate there. I think I had my first date there! That place is my home away from home, and just to throw it away because (of) poor management is heartbreaking."
And the idea that Facebook and video games are to blame for the potential demise of hockey in Lapeer? "That’s a quitters attitude."
"Get kids excited to play. You
can’t just open the doors to the place and hope people show up. When’s the
last time they had a community outreach? Never. Did they ever contact
sponsors? No. Why does Oxford High School drive an extra 20 miles to Troy? Why
doesn’t Davison play here? Why has there never been another pro team? Or
why has there never been a junior team? Why do we run both sheets of
ice every year except for the last two?"
The options to save the Polar Palace seem somewhat limited. Barring some sort of community-based fundraising effort, the odds are rather slim of keeping it open as a hockey venue. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the co-owner of the arena also happens to own both local newspapers in town, and as such, isn't entirely insulated from public pressure as long as he still owns a business that is very much dependent on local advertising and community support.
Regardless of what decision they ultimately make, however, MacKenzie still sounds as optimistic as ever about the future of hockey here, and as committed as ever to making it work.
"This is my home. I'm not going anywhere."
