The City of Swift Current has chosen a contractor for the much anticipated Fairview East Arena upgrade, and it looks as though it will be completed before the 2020-21 season is scheduled to get underway.

At Monday's Swift Current city council meeting, Jim Jones, Swift Current's general manager of community services, weighed the two bids on behalf of city council, and one came out the clear winner.

Stevenson Refrigeration in Regina bid $876,193.88 to comlete the upgrades to the rink, which are set to include a new header system and concrete pad for the facility.

Two of the key advantages of the Stevenson bid tha came to light during the tender process were of particular interest; the fact that they would be using local companies as their sub-contractors as opposed to the alternative by Reward Refrigeration from Alberta, who made no mention of such in their bid, as well as the fact that Stevenson would bring their job to completion in 90 days against Reward's 115 days.

Those extra 25 days makes a big difference financially during the start of hockey season.

"The extra completion time would place the community and the user group in a difficult situation in the allocation of ice in the community and one extra month of downtime would reduce revenue at the Fairview facility by about $24,000 for the month of November."

When complete, the new system, a refrigerated concrete floor with underslab heat would allow Fairview to be used as a dry pad for off-season usage for other sports.

"The existing east ice surface presently is a sand floor with a refrigerated piping system which limits the facililty to winter operation only. The new (system) will provide...off-season dry pad usage for sports like lacrosse, ball-hockey and others."

The budget for the project had originally been set at $950,000, with a portion of that coming from the Municipal Economic Enhancement Program (MEEP) that has been created by the provincial government in an attempt to stimulate infrastructure spending and kick start the economic recovery from COVID-19.

The city expects that the work will get underway quickly.