January and February were exciting months in our search for PCC’s new home with dedicated curling ice.  Our first initiative included reaching out to the City of Petoskey regarding a proposed public/private partnership to build a dedicated curling facility at the Winter Sports Park.  Board members Willmott & Sattler reached out to Petoskey’s Mayor, City Manager and Director of Parks and Recreation with an introductory proposal and followed up with a more detailed PowerPoint presentation of PCC’s 5-year strategic plan.  (A copy of the 5-year strategic plan PowerPoint can be found at HERE.)  General feed-back from the City Manager and Parks Director during a video conference call was muted and not encouraging in the context of our currently proposed timeline for completion.  Their counter proposal was to offer the newly enclosed WSP rink scheduled to be completed in 2022 as PCC’s new home venue. We explained that we would be happy to host Learn To Curls at the newly renovated rink to support the City, but need to focus on building dedicated ice to sustain and build membership and league play.

An excellent, front page story in the Petoskey News Review on February 12 after our proposal was mentioned at a subsequent city council meeting.

The Board has since created a prioritized list of other potential local governments and organizations with whom PCC could establish a mutually beneficial, long term relationship as our new home.