Hockey facility with 2 NHL-sized rinks moving forward in Chesterfield

A rendering of the two-rink ice hockey facility proposed in Chesterfield. (County documents)

With its site now secured, a sizable new ice hockey venue is planning to open next year in Chesterfield.

Chesterfield Sports Enterprises, an entity tied to Powhatan Ice Den owner and local hockey booster Fred Festa, will begin construction in the coming days on an 89,000-square-foot facility at 2300 Genito Place that would feature two professional-level ice rinks at full build-out.

The facility’s site is in the western part of the county near River City Sportsplex and next to The Lake, a mixed-use development that recently saw its first commercial tenants open.

Ryan Winfree, the future ice hockey venue’s general manager, said in an interview last week that construction was scheduled to start shortly after the group’s $1.6 million acquisition of the facility’s 9-acre site in a deal that recorded with the county in March.

The land was most recently assessed at about $578,000, according to online county records. Isaac DeRegibus of Thalhimer handled the deal on behalf of the seller, Waterford Knox LLC.

The facility is expected to be built in two phases, with the initial construction taking the form of a 46,000-square-foot structure with the first ice sheet, as well as 400 spectator seats and some of the planned 10 locker rooms.

That section is anticipated to open in summer 2026, and phase two of the project would bring the second ice rink, another 400 spectator seats and the remaining locker rooms, Winfree said.

Minneapolis-based JLG is the project’s architecture firm. EDC is the project’s general contractor and the engineer is Balzer and Associates. Winfree declined to share a cost estimate for the project.

The first phase of the project would take the form of a 46,000-square-foot building with one ice rink and 400 spectator seats.

The facility, which is referred to as the Ice Arena at Chesterfield in a rendering submitted to the county in late 2024, doesn’t have an official name yet. Winfree said that discussions were underway for naming rights for the venue.

The facility in Chesterfield would be used for youth and adult hockey programs and clinics, as well as figure skating and youth hockey tournaments. The specifics of what programming would be held there haven’t been nailed down yet.

Sports Enterprises sees the upcoming facility, which it filed plans for last summer, as a means to help attract a professional hockey team to the region. The venue is designed to be suitable as a training ground for a future team, and the idea would be that it would complement a larger arena where the team would play games.

Winfree said the now-stalled GreenCity project in Henrico, which is planned to feature a 17,000-seat arena as part of a massive mixed-use development along Interstate 95 between I-295 and Parham Road, was considered the best bet to establish a large venue for a pro team to play. The project hit a roadblock in recent weeks when Henrico declared Green City Partners, which had been tapped to handle the commercial piece of the project, in default of performance and land purchase agreements related to the development.

Speaking prior to Henrico’s announcement last week that it would start a search for a new developer to take over the stalled GreenCity project, Winfree said his group’s project is a go regardless.

“We’re still open to the possibility of hosting a professional team,” Winfree said. “If GreenCity was going to go through or not, we knew it was going to be a ways out. We’re more focused on local programming and growing hockey in Richmond.”

The Sports Enterprises entity behind the project is tied to Fred Festa, a retired chemicals industry executive and local ice hockey booster.

Festa previously owned the Greenville Swamp Rabbits minor league hockey team from 2012 to 2018. He pitched the idea of bringing a new minor league hockey team to Richmond as part of the city’s failed arena-anchored Navy Hill project.

Festa’s Powhatan Ice Den has grown since it first opened in 2021. The nearly 15,000-square-foot facility offers youth and adult ice hockey programming on a 60-by-120-foot ice rink and expanded last year with the addition of two new locker rooms.

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