LOOK: City putting ice back in the WFCU Centre’s AM800 rink after fire damage over a year ago

The city is poised to reopen the AM800 Community Rink at the WFCU Centre in Windsor over a year after a fire forced its closure.

On April 28, 2025, a fire at the east end complex on 8787 McHugh Street tore through the roof above the AM800 community rink while the water used to extinguish the fire also seeped into the insulation, affecting the adjacent GreenShield and Corporal Andrew Grennon community rinks, but they have remained in operation since the fire.

The air handling units were also impacted, which resulted in some mould issues over the hot summer months last year.

Since the fire, crews have been making repairs to the roof, the insulation, and mechanical systems but that work is nearing an end.

Corey Elliott, the City of Windsor’s manager of arenas and the WFCU Centre, says they are now in the process of putting in and building up the ice on the AM800 Rink.

“We’re aiming for the middle of next week to be ready for sure. We expected it to be ready before that, but we’re using the safe zone of probably Wednesday of next week,” he says.

At the time of the fire, the damage was estimated to be over $1 million, and while the final figure has not been calculated yet, it is now expected to be much higher.

Elliott says they’re still assessing the GreenShield and Corporal Andrew Grennon community rinks to see what additional work needs to be completed to the roof above those spaces.

“Whether we need to replace any of the Low E ceiling, the insulation you see on the inside of the arena, the silver lining that looks like aluminium foil, or that kind of thing. Then they’re finalizing the scope of the project of how many solar panels they need to remove and how much of that roof they need to fix,” he says.

Elliott says through the summer, they usually only run two of the three community rinks at the WFCU Centre.

“We’ll be shutting one of those down, and we’ll work with the vendor to see if that’s when they could do the work. If it’s something that will require another rink to come down, we’ll look at doing that next summer and stage that work for them. We’re not looking to impact our user groups or our guests anymore,” he says.

While the roof on the AM800 rink has been replaced, the design still needs to be completed to reinstall the rooftop solar panels, which were destroyed in the fire.

The fire also forced the city to make changes to the overall ice time schedule, moving user groups around to other arenas across Windsor and removing curling from the Capri Pizzeria Recreation Complex to help accommodate all the demands for ice time.

The fall ice time and programming schedule will be back to normal after Labour Day.