Cheers Gaz whats the difference between Manchester Phoenix and Manchester Storm?
The Storm folded a couple of years ago and a fans group called manchester fans of ice hockey (catchy name) started up the pheonix, they currently split home games between deeside leisure center in wales and sheffield ice center.
the venture is run by a charity set up by a local ice skater from the 80's who was quite good or something like that, he felt that with no ice rink now within a decent distance alot of the talent which had been nurtured at the previous ice rink was being lost, believe it or not alot of kids who were skating at the rink had some real talent along with being scrotbag chavs(yes i know i was one of them once).
I think his name was nicky something or other but hey. Like gaz said the official matchday maximum will be 2,500 but it has the projected capacity of 2,604 but after dugouts and disabled areas are marked out it brings the safety levels into line with the 2,500 mark.
I don't believe the lease rate is too big for the location and the links to local amenities, i think it was worked out on projected income and and life span.
The current rink being built has a maximum life span of 15 yearsbut by that time would be decrepit and worse than the old rink. after something like 3 years work is to start on the permanent building next to the rink if the belief that the building warrents a longer life than 15 years.
Not a geek but i have done a bit of looking into this before now out of interest so that is where i have picked up this information from
just read above that most of the things i put down have been noted already oh well one thing not mentioned was that this was built with being a new chav hangout in mind!