Ice sports shafted by Cardiff Council…again
- Thread starter Jones72
- Start date
Here is the link
https://www.change.org/p/prioritise...itial&share_bandit_exp=initial-35516590-en-GB
Too many signatures will put pressure on saving something that isn’t viable and may mean investors pull out, it could risk boycotting any changes.
https://www.change.org/p/prioritise...itial&share_bandit_exp=initial-35516590-en-GB
Too many signatures will put pressure on saving something that isn’t viable and may mean investors pull out, it could risk boycotting any changes.
How do you know it isn't viable? If they had the second pad up and running properly they would have way more of a chance of making it viable and turn a profit and it would take a lot of the use off the main pad which is in such a crap state currently.
Seems easier to say no its not viable when it's not even had a chance to get up and running again properly.
Seems easier to say no its not viable when it's not even had a chance to get up and running again properly.
“How do l know it’s not viable“. The council meeting‘s discussing the future plans for the IAW who stated the 2nd pad isn’t viable as an ice pad, that’s how. Without an alternative viable solution by an investor willing to accept and absorb any financial losses, it’s on public record, the council stated Cardiff will loose it’s only ice rink.
The reason it hasn’t got up and running is basic maths, if you calculate the highest generated income and compare that to the running cost now and you’ve got a deficit, the conclusion is just basic economics. The Council refuse to pay any further monies to the IAW, it has to generate at the very least it’s break even point.
The difficulty for the Devils Owners to become the lease holders is the Devils being the only sizeable regular income, making it very difficult for the Owners to find alternative revenue sources, particularly when they’d have to pay out a significant amount before ever seeing any return repurposing the 2nd pad area. It’s a very significant financial risk for a group who needed to come together just to buy the Devils club.
An investor coming into the venue though would be charging the Devils to use the facility, therefore having at least one large revenue stream.
The reason it hasn’t got up and running is basic maths, if you calculate the highest generated income and compare that to the running cost now and you’ve got a deficit, the conclusion is just basic economics. The Council refuse to pay any further monies to the IAW, it has to generate at the very least it’s break even point.
The difficulty for the Devils Owners to become the lease holders is the Devils being the only sizeable regular income, making it very difficult for the Owners to find alternative revenue sources, particularly when they’d have to pay out a significant amount before ever seeing any return repurposing the 2nd pad area. It’s a very significant financial risk for a group who needed to come together just to buy the Devils club.
An investor coming into the venue though would be charging the Devils to use the facility, therefore having at least one large revenue stream.
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My honest opinion and I'm sorry if people get offended but I really don't care what happens to ice pad 2 as long as cardiff has a pad that a Devils eihl team can play on and continue being Cardiffs most successful team of all time.
If it wasn't for the Devils I doubt an ice pad had lasted this long.
If it wasn't for the Devils I doubt an ice pad had lasted this long.
The second pad isn't making any money because its not being run properly... There's so much potential in the entire building but no one at the Council gives enough of a shit! The Junior Devils having ice time cancelled for other things and different age groups having to share the ice shows that there's a need for the second pad! The Cafe and the Bar don't even get run properly and that's one of their revenue streams!
Afraid there are many home truths with IAW that people fail to confront and people associated with it have stolen a living and been exposed as being out of their depth with no entrepreneurial acumen.
IAW has never been given an identity. The watered down image designed to panda to the prawn sandwich brigade as a multi purpose arena was a huge mistake but if you live in that world you see nothing else. That building is an ice rink. Plain and simple. It should have been set up as a one dimensional hub for ice sports in totality. The walls should be dripping in Cardiff ice sports history not white walls. The pricing for ice time has been a joke for years and simply priced people out of the venue. It’s not a lack of demand. It’s a shambolic pricing structure and lack of strategic business plan for usage that has killed it. The current business plan is lazy in the extreme as is the viewpoint it’s non viable. The political levering for that agenda is transparent and arrogant. The venue could be filled to a significantly higher capacity if someone actually tried but it appears to have the gypsies curse as far as who has been given that task.
Even now they declare the second pad non viable but instead of keeping in the facilities lane and therefore turning pad 2 into a hard standing rink for roller skating, hockey, ball hockey and basically making the problem how house of sport keeps their rink going they come up with this BS about non viable.
The facility is not marketed. It’s not managed. It’s a scandal the transparency of how it has been allowed to be failed by multiple people. All start ups will take a loss to get to a position of sustained growth and profitability but for whatever reason that’s viewed as unacceptable. What has happened is a pre existing customer base has been marginalised by a ridiculous pricing structure and depressed the entire demand. The people associated should be ashamed of themselves for that and for Christ sake never put it on your CV as a badge of honour.
You have to be broad minded with that facility. The issue is it is not filled during the day time. Evenings and Weekends it’s rammed. So how do you attract a daytime clientele. Noting the stupidity of a lack of windows meaning you would always have unnecessary overheads of lighting etc. What would be your daytime customer base. Golden oldies, golden oldies looking after grand kids, students, shift workers. There is a broad base. I myself if I can go and shoot pucks for £5 I’m in like the driving range for golf. If it’s £15 then you’re having a laugh. With the correct hooks and marketing thought and management of overheads daytimes should be able to turn a small profit. Weekends and evenings then produce the big bucks.
Myself and I usually moderate myself on here quite well think this is an absolute disgrace and those that have allowed it to happen should be disgusted with themselves. You have taken a golden opportunity and fecked it right up and now have the audacity to start covering arses claiming it because of design flaws and lack of demand. It’s plagued by incompetence, arrogance, lack of ability and greed.
And let’s be honest I’m not taking the councils viewpoint on this either given their strategic catastrophe that is Cardiff city centre now. Hang your hat on making it a shopping hub whilst the whole world goes digital and then your only horse left in the race is that it’s a home for piss heads of the uk to congregate in. Amazing foresight with a small dash of political corruption thrown in.
IAW has never been given an identity. The watered down image designed to panda to the prawn sandwich brigade as a multi purpose arena was a huge mistake but if you live in that world you see nothing else. That building is an ice rink. Plain and simple. It should have been set up as a one dimensional hub for ice sports in totality. The walls should be dripping in Cardiff ice sports history not white walls. The pricing for ice time has been a joke for years and simply priced people out of the venue. It’s not a lack of demand. It’s a shambolic pricing structure and lack of strategic business plan for usage that has killed it. The current business plan is lazy in the extreme as is the viewpoint it’s non viable. The political levering for that agenda is transparent and arrogant. The venue could be filled to a significantly higher capacity if someone actually tried but it appears to have the gypsies curse as far as who has been given that task.
Even now they declare the second pad non viable but instead of keeping in the facilities lane and therefore turning pad 2 into a hard standing rink for roller skating, hockey, ball hockey and basically making the problem how house of sport keeps their rink going they come up with this BS about non viable.
The facility is not marketed. It’s not managed. It’s a scandal the transparency of how it has been allowed to be failed by multiple people. All start ups will take a loss to get to a position of sustained growth and profitability but for whatever reason that’s viewed as unacceptable. What has happened is a pre existing customer base has been marginalised by a ridiculous pricing structure and depressed the entire demand. The people associated should be ashamed of themselves for that and for Christ sake never put it on your CV as a badge of honour.
You have to be broad minded with that facility. The issue is it is not filled during the day time. Evenings and Weekends it’s rammed. So how do you attract a daytime clientele. Noting the stupidity of a lack of windows meaning you would always have unnecessary overheads of lighting etc. What would be your daytime customer base. Golden oldies, golden oldies looking after grand kids, students, shift workers. There is a broad base. I myself if I can go and shoot pucks for £5 I’m in like the driving range for golf. If it’s £15 then you’re having a laugh. With the correct hooks and marketing thought and management of overheads daytimes should be able to turn a small profit. Weekends and evenings then produce the big bucks.
Myself and I usually moderate myself on here quite well think this is an absolute disgrace and those that have allowed it to happen should be disgusted with themselves. You have taken a golden opportunity and fecked it right up and now have the audacity to start covering arses claiming it because of design flaws and lack of demand. It’s plagued by incompetence, arrogance, lack of ability and greed.
And let’s be honest I’m not taking the councils viewpoint on this either given their strategic catastrophe that is Cardiff city centre now. Hang your hat on making it a shopping hub whilst the whole world goes digital and then your only horse left in the race is that it’s a home for piss heads of the uk to congregate in. Amazing foresight with a small dash of political corruption thrown in.
Something that doesn’t help one iota is signage. There’s nowt on the building to say it’s a Ice Rink, IAW don’t mean Jack shit to most people, it could be the name of a company that works out of there,. and it’s a bloody disgrace that there’s no signs on the link road , or any other road that informs people where it is, and that it actually exists. The whole situation is pretty shambolic in fairness, we have been in that building now for 7 yrs, has it lost money for 7yrs, or is this problem more recent times, if it’s fairly recent then it really needs looking at. Let’s get one thing straight, the council don’t give a toss about the Devils or ice users, they didn’t give a shit about us 17yrs ago, and they don’t give a shit about us today. Sports Village, give me a break.
The initial design criteria & plans got binned for the cheap alternative we have now. The IAW needed the whole area to be developed it still does, the fear at the moment is the Velodrome design is being used to win over the current users at Maindy, in much the same way as the IAW was being part of a bigger development with Ski Slope, shopping, multi storey parking and restaurants. Get people to agree, develop Maindy, pocket the money and instead of the flash Velodrome with its restaurants, shops, etc etc etc they just get a poor version of their current facility. Cardiff & Wales has a history of basically bullshiting people. Which is why the current Brains site is stagnating & the proposed development at the Dragon centre is way over budget. Yet people keep voting for the same incompetence every term. This is a big reason why investors, the people capable of as Mooney#16 points out, turning the IAW into the venue it could be from coming in and making those business decisions. What we will probably get is Planet Ice running the place for a year or two, it’ll officially loose a ton of money, accountants diverting funds out of the IAW into Planet Ice and we will be placed in a worse position with the Council announcing it’s tried & exhausted every opportunity without success. The Council are just going through the motions, what they want isn’t a sports village, it’s a continuation of housing developments.
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It’s a bloody disgrace mate, it’s supposed to be Ice Arena Wales, you know the National Ice Rink of Wales,not a building in disguise. I know countless amounts of people that don’t even know it exists, that says a huge amount about the total disregard people care about the place, running a business is about informing the public A,that you are there, and B how you get therE, it’s pretty dire really.
it all comes down to marketing, lack of signage would be a big negative, making the ice rink frontage stand out as a ice rink also would be a positive move, as for the second pad, again it's marketing. example market the use of ice hockey, ice skating, public skating,, ice disco, curling, ice fitness classes, sled hockey, and ice soccer, yes its a thing (does not use ice skates) just think out of the box? also ice bumper cars
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