From Niagara Falls to Hong Kong, custom rink builder has it covered

Brendan Lenko’s construction contract doesn’t guarantee your child will play in the NHL, or win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating.

However, that could be one of the side benefits of his firm building an artificial ice rink in your backyard — or inside your eight-car garage, as some customers have chosen.

Lenko owns Custom Ice Inc., a Burlington firm that is building portable and permanent ice rinks all over the world.

One of the first rinks he built when he started his firm 10 years ago was in the backyard of Oakville resident Dave Gagner, who had just retired after playing 15 years in the National Hockey League. Gagner wanted a rink for his 10-year-old son Sam to play on.

Gagner was so impressed with the ice pad, that he decided to join Lenko as a partner in his fledgling firm. Today Gagner is the full-time director of player development with the Vancouver Canucks.

People are skating on Lenko’s rinks in Hong Kong, Ireland, Sweden, Ukraine, Spain, Romania and throughout United States and Canada.

Custom Ice Inc. recently completed a large rink at the brink of the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls. The Rink-at the Brink is an innovative new addition this winter to Niagara’s famous Festival of Lights, where more than three million coloured lights depict Christmas scenes and Disney characters throughout Niagara Parks.

Lenko said the rink, measuring 60 ft. by 120 ft., is the same size as the famous outdoor rink at the Rockefeller Center in New York City. He said it might remain in operation beside the falls year round rather than just during the Festival of Lights.

And a major feature of Toronto’s proposed $17 billion waterfront revitalization will be a large skating rink in Sherbourne Park, which will be one of the world’s first LEED parks.

Lenko said his winter skating rink will be part of a 240-metre-long water channel running through a sculptured forest along the east side of the park. Sherbourne Park, expected to open next summer, will be the centre point of the East Bayfront portion of the waterfront redevelopment.

At his Burlington headquarters Lenko’s 25 employees make the plastic tubing that plays a principal role in the rink-building system. A portable chiller cools an antifreeze solution that is piped through the plastic tubes. Permanent rinks have the plastic pipes imbedded in a concrete pad, while temporary and portable rinks have pipes lying on a bed of sand.

About a third of Lenko’s rinks are residential. But most are built in parks for municipalities and for corporate customers. They range in price from $25,000 to $800,000.

Last year he put a large kidney-shaped rink in Kendall Square in the heart of Cambridge, Mass. up against the campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Somebody near Uxbridge got a free rink in their back yard for a short period because Hollywood needed a backyard skating rink to film the 2005 feature movie Ice Princess.

Lenko created an outdoor rink in the summer heat of Boca Raton, Fla. for the grand opening of a Nordstrom Department Store.

The world ice climbing championships were staged in Romania last February and competitors had to climb a perpendicular wall of ice created by the crew from Custom Ice Inc.

Niagara’s Rink at the Brink offered additional construction challenges because directly below the ice pad are large concrete conduits carrying water from the upper Niagara River to hydro plants down stream.

“Because of the constant mist coming from the Horseshoe Falls our rink had to have a large tent built above it and that required sinking footings for the supports, but at the same time avoiding the water tunnels,” said Lenko.

The firm also builds the boards around the ice pad for hockey and many of the rinks it builds are NHL size.