PEORIA, Ill. – The puck is now on the Peoria Civic Center’s side of the ice.
The Peoria City Council Tuesday night approved issuing $20.5 million in bonds to help finance projects the Civic Center didn’t have the money for, and outside $25 million from a state grant.
That would in turn help upgrade the center’s ice plant, and possibly keep the Peoria Rivermen at Carver Arena past this season, which is still an unknown.
But much of the council’s discussion on the matter Tuesday centered around whether the city’s bond rating would suffer with the new debt.
“I don’t think the addition of this debt will have any impact on our rating,” said Kyle Cratty, City Finance Director. “The factors that have affected the city’s rating over the years have more been our reserve levels, which…as you saw, is improving. So that may have a positive impact.”
Cratty says the one negative impact has often been related to pension payments, and he says the city now has a plan to deal with that.
The Peoria Civic Center Authority points out that the cost estimates to fix all the items on their list are several years old, and thanks to the pandemic, projects that have so far been funded have cost more than those estimates.
There’s also no guarantee the Peoria Rivermen will stay at Carver Arena, even if all the repairs are made. Four home games are left this season, at which time negotiations will likely begin in earnest with the team to extend their lease past this season.
Even with all the attention on the ice plant and the Rivermen, resident Mike Olson reminded the City Council that the ice isn’t just for the Peoria Rivermen – it’s for other groups that also need ice skating facilities.
“We had 30 synchronized skating teams here from all over the country…a week and a half ago,” said Olson, in addition to a youth skating event this past weekend that brought kids from all over Central Illinois.
CLICK HERE to read the full city ordinance that allows for the issuance of the bonds, which will be paid off in earnest with debt from other city bonds for the Civic Center falls off the books in several years (PDF document).
