The Crookston Park Board met Monday night at City Hall and were visited by former Crookston Park and Rec Director, Scott Kleven who has been working on a project that will provide a picture history of Crookston Hockey along the counter in the main rink explained Parks and Rec Director Scott Riopelle. “He’s putting together pictures of all the former teams, along the north side of the event arena,” said Riopelle. “On the east side of the press box we will have the Cathedral team and Pirate girl’s hockey, on the west side we’ll have Central and the current boy’s program.” Kleven said he has all the girls teams pictures completed going back to the first year. He is working on the Cathedral School Blue Wave and the earliest team picture is from 1947. Kleven said if anybody knows of any Cathedral teams before 1947 he would like to know and they will add it to the pictures. The last part of the project will be Crookston Central and Crookston High School teams. Kleven has received help from Cathedral School; Crookston High School; the Crookston Public Library; Larry and Judy Brekken; Doug, Pat, Bill, and Pam Sullivan, and Jerry Fenno. Travis Oliver and the Crookston High School trades class are putting the pictures underneath plexiglass and they will be putting the girls hockey pictures up soon.
The Park Board also discussed outdoor ice rinks and possible locations that might work for a rink with minimal maintenance. With the outdoor rink located next to the Sports Center, one would think it’s a convenient, easily maintained surface. But when it snows, snow removal equipment has to first be used to clear city streets and sidewalks, additionally, the rink acts like a snow fence and collects more than its fair share of blowing snow. The result is it often takes quite a while after a snowfall to get the rink cleared properly. One problem with a rink located at Central Park would be the flooding in the spring and if the boards are frozen in the ground they wouldn’t be able to get them out in time. The other problem with putting ice in Central Park is the snowmobile races that will be held in January and possibly again in March. The track for the races would take up most of the area where the ice would be placed. Riopelle said he will look at some possible outdoor rink locations and bring that to the board in the December meeting.
Riopelle also provided the board with an update on amenities throughout the city, and the progress being made on many of the topics listed in the Park Board’s five-year plan. “We have a five-year plan list, some is a wish list, and we were just talking about paths, we had the walking path on the south end, we had a nature trail path out at Kreutzburg,” said Riopelle. “Some of these other things are upgrades on fields, poured concrete at the Sports Center, some are big-ticket items we don’t know if we’ll have the money for, but we have completed over half of the projects in a couple of years.” A couple of projects completed within the past year or two include the sports flooring at the Sports Center, work on many of the parks to make them ADA accessible, added trees to parks, installing the flagpole through donation at Landslide Park and the process continues to transfer ownership of the Community Pool from the School District to the City.
The park board also discussed having the hockey teams and city employees park in the back of the parking lot. Park board member Chris Fee said the Pirate girls hockey team was looking at parking on the west end of the parking lot in front of the arena to leave parking spots open for the public. The boys team currently has the players park in the upper half when they go out of town. Fee asked if we could have the city employees do the same. Riopelle said they will look at it and maybe bring some gravel and make a player-only lot to the west of the arena to free up some spaces, especially when the teams are out of town for two games. Riopelle said the players could use the west entrance and it could possibly free up 20 or more parking spots.
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