Rink on the roof
By: Brendan lenko, p.eng.
april 11, 2016
After a successful 2015 marketing
program featuring
a natural ice rink
in the middle of the
Rocky Mountains,
Molson went to new
heights for its 2016
“Anything for Hockey” campaign. This
time they decided to put a rink on the
roof of a Toronto skyscraper. To build
this rink they called on industry leader,
Custom Ice Inc. of Burlington, Ontario.
“I got a call from Molson’s ice maker
and thought he was crazy,” said Brendan
Lenko, president and chief engineer of
Custom Ice. At first they wanted to do
a full size rink, but when the ice maker,
BJ Gagnon of Smart Ice Inc., said the
building would only fit a 42-foot by 100-
foot rink, Lenko started to listen. Gagnon
would not reveal the customer, but
assured Lenko the project was for real.
Immediately Lenko said, “You gotta
keep the pucks in with full raised netting,”
but Gagnon and Molson engineers
already had that covered. It involved tentstyle
netting supported by two columns
and a main cable running down the middle.
The netting would be installed and
removed regularly when the wind loads
required it — but the net covered the
rink completely with no puck mishaps.
Custom Ice provided the NHL-approved
netting which they obtained from ORFA
member Pro Nets Sports.
Next was the access to the roof: “How
big is the freight elevator?” Lenko asked
Gagnon. But the elevator did not go
to the roof. Helicopter? Not this time.
Fortunately, Molson had already receivedapproval from PCL to use the crane that
was erecting the building right next
door to the 120 Adelaide St. rink location.
How else could you get a 4,200
square-foot rink, boards, platform, and
refrigeration equipment to the top of a
32-story skyscraper?
A Challenging Build
PCL could only provide the crane for
two days: one day for the platform, two
weeks before the install and the other
day for all the rink equipment. With limited
roof space, every component had
to be orchestrated in sequence like a
Broadway musical production. “We just
could not box ourselves in,” said Lenko,
whose company supplied more two
truck-loads of rink equipment. It had to
fit like a puzzle even before the rink was
built and Custom Ice put together the
puzzle perfectly.
The platform, insulation, piping and
boards were all installed in one day. With
the high winds 32 stories up, Molson
engineers would not allow the platform
to just rest on the roof without enough
weight on it to hold it down. The roof was
sloped, with a waterproof membrane so they could not fasten through it. The
entire leveling platform and rink was just
resting on the roof without any anchoring.
It needed the weight to prevent the
high winds from picking it up like a sail,
so once the rink was ready it was turned
on and flooded immediately.
Once the ice was made, Custom Ice
installed the mullions and the plexiglass.
“It was a bit scary installing the glass
on the edge of the building wall,” said
Lenko. “If you drop something it could
fall 32 stories.” This was pretty dangerous.
Lenko insisted they use three crew
members to install each sheet of four-foot
plexiglass. Although it was easy to lift by
hand, Lenko’s team used suction cups
to make sure they maintained control
of the glass in the wind. Finally, a safety
cable was tightly wrapped behind the
mullions to give them extra strength
against the wind.
Lenko admitted that they underestimated
the high winds, which gusted
to 80 and 90 kilometres per hour at
times. The boards were frozen in place
in the ice and when the glass went up,
there was a much greater torque on the
freeze in place board brackets. There were a couple of close calls, but Lenko,
an engineer himself, was satisfied with
the performance.
So this is all for what? Not just a 30-second
beer commercial on Hockey Night in
Canada. There was great interest in the
rink when Toronto office workers came
back from Christmas vacation and saw
that a rink appeared when they looked
down on a neighboring skyscraper. No
one knew where it came from until
Gagnon and the ice makers put the
Molson logo down. It created lots of hype.
Because of the interest and great success
of the rink, Molson extended the
operation and offered the rink to corporate
events and individual rentals.
One hour of rooftop ice cost any group
$2,000 and a three-hour corporate event
complete with catering and the works
cost $15,000. Of course, at those prices,
Molson included a couple of Canadian
beers for each skater.
“We wanted to do a great job for
Molson,” Lenko said. “It was a once in
a lifetime event for those that skated on
the roof, but it was just as important to
our company and our staff.” Custom
Ice had their own corporate skate on
the roof on its last night of operation.
“Although we’ve built over 500 rinks, this
one was special,” Lenko added. “It was
absolutely majestic skating on the roof
top rink under a quiet star filled sky. This
one will be remembered.”
Brendan Lenko, P.Eng., is president
of Custom Ice Inc. He can be reached
at blenko@customicerinks.com or
www.customicerinks.com or by phone at
(905) 220-2580.