Lifeguard Arena, future practice facility and headquarters of the AHL’s Henderson Silver Knights, is beginning to take shape.
The 120,000-square-foot facility is projected to cost upward of $26 million and is expected to be completed for use in early October, construction officials said. The Athletic was granted a tour of the construction, which is roughly 80 percent complete, principal owner of Gillett Construction Michael Petersen said.
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The arena will be extremely similar to the Golden Knights’ practice facility, City National Arena, with two sheets of ice, a team store, upstairs restaurants and office space. Thus far, Petersen estimates the construction crews have laid 140,500 square feet of concrete and 1 million pounds of steel in the building. The front side of the building will be much more open, with large windows along the top of the wall.
Lifeguard Arena features several giant windows on the front end of the building, allowing more natural light into the rink.Each rink is flanked by five rows of concrete stands for fans to sit, with a capacity of 360 per rink. It’s a very similar setup to City National Arena, with the stands leading to the second floor — where the restaurant and bar are located in the middle.
The restaurant will also be MacKenzie River Pizza, but it won’t look nearly the same as City National Arena’s restaurant. That’s because the kitchen will be located between the rinks while the restaurant is pushed forward in the building, and will feature a large outdoor patio area with balconies overlooking downtown Henderson.
A look at where MacKenzie River Pizza will sit inside Lifeguard Arena, with a view of its outdoor patio balcony.The construction crew working on the project averages 190 employees on the site per day, Petersen said. It finished laying the concrete slabs beneath the ice rinks Wednesday. Underneath that concrete sits 7 miles of piping for each rink.
In the first 10 days after concrete is poured, the rink must be covered in plastic with water poured on top of it for a “flooded cure.”
After that, crews will remove the plastic, clean the concrete and let it cure for another 14 days. Then, the painstakingly slow cooling process begins. To avoid thermal cracking or fracturing of the concrete, the slabs must be cooled extremely slowly — dropping only 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit each day.
The easternmost rink at Lifeguard Arena is being flood cured, covered in giant plastic sheets and water.That will be accomplished with the building’s $3.5 million CIMCO refrigeration unit, which is the size of a locomotive and harnesses 550 tons of cooling capacity, Petersen said. It’s the same cooling system used at City National Arena and T-Mobile Arena.
Lifeguard Arena’s $3.5 million refrigeration system.“When we set out to build this place, I took a lot of the feedback from the guys who work (at City National Arena),” said Darren Eliot, the Golden Knights’ vice president of hockey programming and facility operations. “The changes might not be things that excite the fans, but small things that make a difference to building operations.”
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One small tweak is the height of the Zamboni-room ceiling. At City National Arena, it stands only 14 feet tall, but most Zambonis require at least 15 feet of clearance to fully tip and dump. They also increased the width of freight hallways and doorways and included a freight elevator and a loading dock so food and beverage deliveries don’t have to be shipped through the front doors, like at City National Arena.
One adjustment hockey players will notice — and love — is that the hockey shop has been moved from inside the merchandise store to the lobby. That means players will have access to skate sharpening, hockey tape and laces even when the team store isn’t open.
Below the restaurant and kitchen sit eight locker rooms that will be used by youth and recreational hockey leagues as well as any public skaters.
A look inside the public locker rooms in LifeGuard Arena, which have already received a coat of paint.The other half of the building will belong mostly to the Silver Knights. Their state-of-the-art locker room will be downstairs, next to the easternmost rink. Above that will be a gym similar to the Golden Knights’ gym at City National Arena, but slightly smaller, Petersen said.
“They wanted it all to be first class,” Eliot said. “Kelly (McCrimmon), George (McPhee) and Bill (Foley) said it has to be first class. They want to gain a competitive advantage, and the way you do that is by having the best there is.”
On the eastern side of the building, there will be a 42 foot-by-24 foot LED screen overlooking a sunken plaza that will be used for outdoor viewing parties and concerts.
That outdoor plaza will be connected to Lifeguard Arena by a second-story bridge, which goes straight into the upstairs restaurant and bar. Petersen also said they will have the ability to close Water Street from Atlantic Avenue to Basic Road for the purpose of festivals or watch parties. That section of Water Street will be overlooked by the restaurant’s balcony seating.
The view out of the second-story windows near the restaurant at Lifeguard Arena.Petersen said the construction crews are considering the option of the NHL using Las Vegas as a hub city for the remainder of its season this summer and it could be possible for one of the two rinks to be ready in time to be used for practice. However, that would be an aggressive timeline, and sources told The Athletic the league is much more likely to use additional rinks at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and the Orleans Arena.
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A more realistic timeline for the rink is for construction to finish early in September, with the doors opening early in October, Petersen said.
(Photos: Jesse Granger / The Athletic)
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