Ottawa Senators LeBreton Arena | 11 Acres | In Planning

[phil235]

Little Caesar's is a beautiful arena - glad they are using that as a model. It also got built on acres of semi-vacant land, so it will be interesting to see how they intend to integrate a practice rink into this tight site.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by phil235

Little Caesar's is a beautiful arena - glad they are using that as a model. It also got built on acres of semi-vacant land, so it will be interesting to see how they intend to integrate a practice rink into this tight site.

UBS Arena I find a little plain, but I'm a fan of Little Caesars. LC's footprint is bigger than the space Ottawa has for the physical arena, so I don't think we can do actual buildings along Albert with the arena at the back. It will have to be a faux facade of buildings along Albert. I don't even know where LC's practice rink is, and as far as I know, it's a private "pay to play" facility, unlike the Sensplex model where the municipality buys time for public use.

For the practice rink in Ottawa, I would imagine they could use the Bayview triangle, which could fit something nearly twice the size of Tom Brown's footprint. It's a very awkward piece of land and it's separated from the rest of the site, so I could see it as a "quiet" corner with the practice rink/Sensplex (or Sensingle, unless they can build stacked ice surfaces) and a couple residential towers, while the east side, more connected to the Aqueduct District will be the entertainment district part of the Sens lands.

I still hope the City works with the Sens to have that practice rink be a replacement for Tom Brown.

EDIT: another consideration is activation around the arena. Most arenas have one, maybe two "active" facades. I imagine Albert will be a live facade with restaurants and maybe the Sens store. Preston will have the main entrance and fan plaza (fitting to have Preston, of The Lord Stanley of Preston, be the Sens fan plaza). Track side might have restaurant terraces. The butt end with parking entrance, shipping and receiving might be best placed on City Centre, so pedestrians walking on Albert might just pass by what looks like an alleyway and just ignore it.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

UBS Arena I find a little plain, but I'm a fan of Little Caesars. LC's footprint is bigger than the space Ottawa has for the physical arena, so I don't think we can do actual buildings along Albert with the arena at the back. It will have to be a faux facade of buildings along Albert. I don't even know where LC's practice rink is, and as far as I know, it's a private "pay to play" facility, unlike the Sensplex model where the municipality buys time for public use.

For the practice rink in Ottawa, I would imagine they could use the Bayview triangle, which could fit something nearly twice the size of Tom Brown's footprint. It's a very awkward piece of land and it's separated from the rest of the site, so I could see it as a "quiet" corner with the practice rink/Sensplex (or Sensingle, unless they can build stacked ice surfaces) and a couple residential towers, while the east side, more connected to the Aqueduct District will be the entertainment district part of the Sens lands.

I still hope the City works with the Sens to have that practice rink be a replacement for Tom Brown.

Agreed, there definitely needs to be a replacement community rink in that area. Maybe something along the lines of a Sensplex on that site. Only issue is that I think they want something connected so that the players can use the same dressing room for practice and games. Hard to see how that works.

You're right, Little Caesar's has a big footprint, with the buildings along the street and the concourses in between. It probably wouldn't work at Lebreton.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by phil235

Agreed, there definitely needs to be a replacement community rink in that area. Maybe something along the lines of a Sensplex on that site. Only issue is that I think they want something connected so that the players can use the same dressing room for practice and games. Hard to see how that works.

You're right, Little Caesar's has a big footprint, with the buildings along the street and the concourses in between. It probably wouldn't work at Lebreton.

Yeah, the way Calgary is doing it seems pretty good, with the practice rink under a plaza. I don't know for sure, but I assume it's connected to the changing rooms.

That brings up another question; the Sens want to build underground parking. Can you build underground parking under an arena? And if you do, them you can't bury the arena to have the concourse at street level. Generally, at least a bit of the bowl is below street level.

Maybe the parking will just be east of Preston, but that would mean they'll have to go 3, 4+ levels.

[BlackRedGold]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That brings up another question; the Sens want to build underground parking. Can you build underground parking under an arena? And if you do, them you can't bury the arena to have the concourse at street level. Generally, at least a bit of the bowl is below street level.

You can. The Bell Centre has it. But it has the ice at ground level so it's a lot of escalators to get down from the higher levels. The CTC is better with the first level concourse at ground level.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by BlackRedGold

You can. The Bell Centre has it. But it has the ice at ground level so it's a lot of escalators to get down from the higher levels. The CTC is better with the first level concourse at ground level.

Thanks for the info. Bell Centre is an absolute beast of a building, in large part no doubt because the ice surface is at ground level.

It will be very interesting to see how the Sens mange the site, the parking and the arena. Accessibility requirements today, not just by law but general awareness, likely wouldn't allow a surface level ice. Ground level concourses seem to become the norm nowadays.

Though not ideal, I wouldn't mind a few levels of underground parking east of Preston and a multi level above ground parking in the Bayveiw triangle, as long as the street level has active frontage and towers are built on top. This would also allow for an underground practice rink that could be better integrated with the main locker rooms.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by BlackRedGold

You can. The Bell Centre has it. But it has the ice at ground level so it's a lot of escalators to get down from the higher levels. The CTC is better with the first level concourse at ground level.

Not sure how many levels of parking are at the Bell Centre, but it is possible for sure. Probably more expensive to have an ice plant in the roof of a parking lot.

The ice at the Bell Centre is at ground level on the St. Antoine side, but not on the other sides of the building. Most of the actual entrances are on the 100-level concourse. I think it would be pretty odd for a bowl not to be at least partially sunken, though I suppose that you could build some sort of above-ground concourse outside the building so people enter partway up. Maybe that would go over the O-train tracks and connect to the north side of Lebreton?