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Inside the same arena that Herb Brooks used to mold the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team into unlikely gold medal winners, there’s been a new miracle on ice. Bloomington Ice Garden, one of Minnesota’s most storied and busiest arenas, underwent a $37 million renovation this year. The city closed all three of the arena’s rinks for construction March 15 and re-opened exactly 200 days later, on Oct. 1, right as planned. Bloomington will celebrate with a new grand opening Nov. 8, when the Jefferson girls hockey team plays Armstrong. “Nobody thought it was going to be possible to open on time,” rink manager Lenny Klevan Schmitz said. “But we opened Oct. 1, which was a small miracle in itself.” Bloomington is burnishing its reputation as a sports boomtown. The city opened two new high school football stadiums this year — one for Jefferson and one for Kennedy — using $6.3 million from the school district’s long-term facilities management plan. The Bloomington Ice Garden (BIG) renovation is part of the city’s three-pronged Bloomington Forward project, which includes a new community health and wellness center costing $102 million and $20 million in improvements for the Nine Mile Creek Corridor. In November 2023, Bloomington residents approved a half-cent sales tax to pay for the project over 20 years. A University of Minnesota Extension analysis concluded that $101 million, or 65%, of that cost would be paid by nonresidents. According to the city, BIG draws 457,400 visitors per year, with 10,000 hours of ice time booked annually, including 26 tournaments that help keep BIG bustling year-round. Up to 70% of BIG’s summer ice rentals are from groups outside Bloomington.
