What We Believe & What We Want 

Members of our coalition are disappointed and frustrated Rockford taxpayers, regional citizens and supporters of Riverview IceHouse, the Rockford Park District and Downtown Rockford. Feeling betrayed and abandoned by the Rockford Park District staff recommendations to close Riverview Ice House and end programming for the UW Health Sports Factory as a sports tournament destination, we made an appeal to the Rockford Park District Board of Commissioners by letter in early October, 2020.  While we come from different backgrounds and perspectives, we are united in our advocacy to save the Riverview Ice House from closure and to maintain the UW Health Sports Factory as a sports tournament destination.   

All of us have "skin in the game" when it comes to Riverview Ice House and Downtown Rockford. Many of us are users. We all are admirers.  Some of us have worked at Riverview. Some of us are current and past elected officials. Through our time, talent and financial investments in Riverview and Downtown Rockford, we have helped drive positive change and momentum for both the sports community and the greater community. We all have emotional connections with these endeavors and all benefit from shared prosperity. 

History/Context

There are two important and related historic points that provide essential context and deserve to be mentioned at the outset. First, several of us engaged with the Rockford Park District starting in 2014 when an initial staff recommendation was emerging to close Riverview IceHouse and move all RPD ice operations to the Carlson Ice Arena in Loves Park. At that time, Mayor Morrissey helped initiate conversations with the Park District after which a joint decision was made to explore a collaborative solution. An Ice Facilities Committee was created that involved community members as well as Park District professional staff. Many of us gave our time and talent to that effort to study the market and our region's needs. We also provided guidance to the professional efforts of a consulting firm (HVS) in 2017/18. Two of us helped fund the HVS study. The same two pledged $3.4 million to the restoration of Riverview as a state-of-the-art downtown asset.

The second critical piece of history was the Reclaiming First partnership that was happening at the same time the Ice Facilities Committee was being formed.  By 2014, the City of Rockford, the Rockford Park District, Loves Park and other regional communities came together to help pass State of Illinois legislation to create a Winnebago County Regional Tourism hotel tax and a governing board. That effort guided and monitored the investment of that tax to support Reclaiming First investments for the UW Health Sports Factory in Downtown Rockford and Mercy Health Sportscore II in Loves Park. This historic partnership demonstrated an incredible spirit of regional collaboration as the City of Rockford agreed to commit the majority of hotel/motel tax generated in Rockford from the new tax to support the Mercy Health Sportscore facility in Loves Park.

 Since 2014, the Reclaiming First partnership resulted in the successful openings of the UW Health Sports Factory and Mercy Health Sportscore II. Moreover, completion of the UW Health Sports Factory was proposed as a significant driver of overnight stays supporting the conversion of the former, vacant Amerock manufacturing building into the recently opened $86 million Embassy Suites Hotel & Rockford Conference Center.  

The Ice Facilities Committee worked to develop an RFP, hire a consultant, and develop a report with recommendations that was completed in September of 2018 (the “Report”). The Report established various options with the goal of maintaining 2.5 sheets of ice, and did not specify a location. The Report also indicated that the District would begin to further “engage the ice community” to explore the options.  While there were informal communications with some individuals after the Report was published, and while there were significant communications with some elected leaders, the District never reconvened the Ice Facilities Committee, nor did the District hold any public meetings to engage the ice community, contrary to the District’s promises.

Consequently, we were incredibly shocked and disappointed by the current recommendation. Two-years after publishing the Ice Facilities Report, Park District staff has now cast aside the prior recommendations of the Ice Facilities Committee; cast aside its commitment to engage the ice community; and cast aside the spirit of regional collaboration that was the hallmark of Reclaiming First. This is unacceptable. 

We Oppose the Current Recommendations

We strongly oppose the current staff recommendations due to the negative economic, social, political and legal implications of the decision. We provide the following summary of some of the critical implications that have not been fully understood or addressed by the Park District in making this decision:

Economic & Social Impact: Abandoning the Riverview Ice House contradicts a strategic imperative driven by the community to re-invest in historically neglected and racially diverse areas of the region. That commitment started in 1976 when the Riverview Ice House first opened and continued with exceptional force over the last 15 years.

Since 2005, hundreds of millions of dollars of public and private money have been invested in Rockford’s urban core. These investments have included multiple major public infrastructure investments (e.g rebuilding Main Street, West State Street, the Morgan Street Bridge, multiple riverfront pedestrian improvements); major private investments (e.g. Prairie Street Brewery,  Burnham Lofts, Talcott Building, Amerock Hotel & Conference Center); and significant public/private partnerships and philanthropic endeavors (e.g. Indoor and Outdoor City Markets, UW Health Sports Factory, Nicholas Conservatory, and BMO Harris Bank Center renovations).

While we are aware of the Park District’s significant commitments to neighborhood parks and community facilities, we consider a decision by the Park District to close Riverview Ice House and abandon its commitment to downtown sports tourism at the UW Health Sports Factory as a substantial departure from its economic and social commitments to its partner organizations and constituents, especially those most in need of the jobs and economic impact driven by sports tourism. 

The geographic and programmatic decisions that the Park District makes related to sports tourism assets need to be made and measured as socially and economically unique elements. These decisions cannot rationally be compared against the decision to keep open or invest in a neighborhood park or community recreation center.

Financial Fairness: Approximately 70% of Rockford Park District property taxes are paid by Rockford citizens. Rockford also pays a significantly larger share of user fees for Park District facilities.  Moreover, the majority of the Reclaiming First Hotel/Motel tax generated by the City of Rockford was pledged to Sportscore II in Loves Park. Within this financial framework, it is patently unfair to Rockford citizens to make a unilateral and non-collaborative decision to close the Riverview Ice House and end the use of the UW Health Sports Factory as a sports tourism facility, moving all of these tourism operations and adjacent jobs and economic development that come with them to  Loves Park. 

Financial Accuracy. Much of the data related to operational subsidies, visitor numbers, and capital investment differences have been impossible to decipher or verify based on publicly available data provided by the Park District. For example, the Park District mingles the operational subsidy and the visitor numbers for Carlson Ice Arena and the Riverview Ice House as well as for the UW Health Sports Factory and Mercy Health Sportscore II. Moreover, a multi-million dollar charitable pledge has been made to support the redevelopment of the Riverview Ice House. We request an opportunity to re-engage with the Park District to fully understand the capital costs and options. We want to be a supportive partner in recommending operating solutions for the Park District, but we need accurate and specific information to do so. 

Political Implications: On its face, the Decision of Loves Park to withdraw from its decades-long financial commitment to the RACVB in September of this year and give a subsidy to the Rockford Park District, followed the very next week with the announcement that the Park District would close the Riverview Ice House and expand Carlson Ice Arena in Loves Park, smacks of short-sighted, backroom political dealing instead of open and transparent collaboration among regional partners. 

We believe that our region benefits through collaborative planning that supports shared prosperity. These Park District staff recommendations fly in the face of shared values of collaboration. The staff recommendation also seems to be creating a particularly troubling pattern of pitting one local community against the other, which we saw recently and very publicly when Rock Valley College withdrew from its Downtown commitments to the City of Rockford and ran a competitive RFP that lead to its decision to build its Advanced Technology Center in Belvidere. We believe our region suffers unnecessarily through competition that results in a zero sum outcome for the region.

Chicago Blackhawks Affiliation: We also fear your decision could jeopardize our community's critical relationship with the Chicago Blackhawks - on which the future of BMO Harris Bank Center surely depends. The Blackhawks have been continuous users of the Riverview Ice House and great supporters of our youth hockey program. We believe we have an opportunity to expand on this partnership and would like to work with the Park District and RAVE to explore that opportunity.

Legal Implications: Sports tournaments staged at the UW Health Sports Factory provided a significant basis for the sale of the bonds for both the UW Health Sports Factory and Embassy Suites Hotel & Conference center.  Sports tourism has also been an anchor element of the Riverview Ice House. The sports tourism industry in Rockford’s urban core has become a central strategy for creating jobs and economic development supporting the area’s hardest hit communities. We fear that the Park District’s staff recommendation could expose the Rockford Park District and other stakeholders to legal action by bond purchasers and others. 

Our Request: Delay Action, Reconvene the Ice Facilities Committee, Engage the Community, Develop a Collaborative Solution

It was our understanding that the Rockford Park District Board of Commissioners intended to vote on a “consent agenda” involving the entire 2020 Action Plan Update on Tuesday, October 13, 2020. That single decision would have driven the closure of Riverview IceHouse, moving all RPD ice facilities to Loves Park and the elimination of sports tourism for the UW Health Sports Factory - in essence abandoning Sports Factory's purpose as a downtown destination for sports tournaments, and relegating it to becoming an expensive local recreation center.

In letter addressed to Park District Board of Commissioners, we asked they pull the closure of Riverview and the programming of the UW Health Sports Factory from the Park District’s upcoming December 13 agenda and direct Park District staff to reconvene the Ice Facilities Committee, engage the broader community and work toward a collaborative solution that saves Riverview Ice House and the U.W. Health Sports Factory as tourism destinations and supports the best interests of all stakeholders.

We also asked that the Park District’s future discussions include taxpayers, customers, the State of Illinois, City of Rockford, Loves Park, Winnebago County, River District Association, Rock River Development Partnership, RAVE, the Rockford Local Development Corporation and other organizations and collaborators so that the financial, social, political and legal implications can be fully evaluated. Most importantly, we seek to work with the Park District to develop options that result in a win-win for all stakeholders.