Yeah have to agree with all of the above. 

I know a few people in Speyside that would welcome the chance to put together a small curling museum. 

As for the fancy Architect speil about this new building I am sorry it just needs to be a big insulated shed and needs none of the additional feature that will add on cost to the project.  I seed to John in his knowledge of what makes a good building to curl in but at my ice makers course a large quantity of glass in the facade was never mentioned.....the best rinks I have been in are windowless boxes and cheap to put up.  5 million would just about put up two in my book.

Its funny that the RCCC have previously shied away from any form of intervention in Ice Rink facilities and their running and now they have
decided to pop their head over the parapit they don't even have Ice Rink experts advising them or designing.  Its a strange and disjointed way of approaching what is being sold as the central focus of curling for the future. 

I watch all that is going on here and feel sorry for the Kinross curling community who have over the years punched way above their weight in developing the sport on very megre resources.  If anyone can rally round this project and make it work its them but really the question is should they?

just coming out of hibernation , s  l  o  w  l  y 

The beauty of forums like this is that you can say anything and expect people to believe it - which I guess puts me in the same boat........however
a. it needs to be rather more than a big shed
b. they did actually visit a number of the curling venues up and down the country that have been built in the last ten years or so

the financial implications are quite another matter and I do fear the worst in that regard - all the talk in the west is of leaving a legacy for generations to come following the Commonwealth games , what of the legacy left by this project?

I have had no sight of the NCA plans and do not pretend to understand the complexities of the secret "value for money" type build vs the "viewing arena" that John Minaar so passionately argues for.

However what I do understand is the question of over-capacity in a declining market. Many years at the sharp end in the meat processing trade have taught me that where a market is contracting and you have many units competing for trade, you consolidate and where possible take capacity out, especially where it is a tired unit.

Watching from the sidelines it appears to me that this NCA will add capacity into a local area where it is not needed. Perth, I believe, is losing cash and has already had to be bailed out by a local governbment grant to secure it's short-term survival, but this just buys time delaying the inevitable where the business model ain't working. Kinross is old, tired, in need of repair/upgrade and is currently a commerially justified bolt on to a commercial enterprise ie the Green Hotel, but it seems the commercial owners have no intention of investing in an upgrade, probably one assumes because it won't achieve the necessary rate of return on investment - that is how commercial enterprises think - no - emotion - it's down to hard numbers (ie commercial reality).

Step forward the RCCC, British Curling etc - there solution is not just to fund the perpetuation of over-capacity, but to worsen it, by building 6 rinks as opposed to 4 ie 2 more rinks to fill throughout each season. And that's before you start thinking about how the hell the wholes thing is funded.

The solution to me seems simple, Cupar will take some existing Kinross trade but insomuch as Kirkaldy is going to shut I believe it is sensible.

The NCA in whatever form it takes would be better put in place as an enhancement of the existing facility at Perth. Hard to say to locals that you will lose a curling facility at Kinross, but Perth is only 10/15 mins up the M90 and Cupar will soon be on-stream too.

Has this been considered at all ? I don't pretend to understand the position indetail but the fundamental of adding capacity into a declining demand curve is in principle commercial lunacy, which is why the only committed support to the NCA appears to be from public sector money (which like to fund acts of lunacy).

The existing NCA will further jeopardise the position of Perth - the sensible thing would be to develop the NCA (a laudable ideal in itself, correctly run) and help solve Perth's existing capacity fill problems.


 
  .   

I reckon Guddler is spot on. There never was a hue and cry from the Kinross area curlers for a new rink. Even if it was to shut as the "spin" from the RCCC indicates - a replacement rink of the same size would cost £1.5-2 mill. Does that make the extra £3mill for the NCA value for money???

You can look at that every which way and the answer has to be no way.

I like Guddlers thinking - the RCCC should have thought this one through more. If Cupar gets funded, if Gogar did get funded at the time and NCA activities given to one or aspects to all 3 and if the worst came to the worst and KInross shut in 5 years time - the excess would have been mopped up without putting the local Kinross curlers to much trouble.

The RCCC could have been sitting in 2010 with 3 new rinks (Stirling, Gogar, Cupar) where the local curlers are desperate to have them and they could have possibley secured the future of Perth by chucking them some business. Instead we have £5mill spent on a place nobody really needs - this cannot be sensible use of resources.

Tell me again what the NCA needs that an existing rink couldnt provide?

Because the Swiss are prepared to pay to do it right. The build cost of this facility is CHF16 Million, that's about GBP 9.3 Million.

On top of that the Adelboden "gemeinde" (village council is the closest translation) are going to subsidise it's operating costs to the tune of CHF200K per year, that's about GBP117K. We're not talking about a council the size of Dumfries and Galloway, we're talking about a town half the size of Kinross.

As usual, the British model of build it as cheap as possible and then spend twice as much patching it up as we go along seems to be the default condition. £2.4 million to renovate the rink in Dumfries...I hear it's going to cost £4 million to renovate Auchenharvie.

No, no, lets spend as little as possible on an insulated shed for our National Academy...that'll bring the new curlers in in droves

There has been no "hue and cry" from the curlers of Kinross. Why not? Oh, yes they already have a curling rink. Small detail that seems to be overlooked is that it will likely be forced to close within the next couple of years whatever happens with the NCA. There's been no "hue and cry" probably because the curlers of Kinross are knuckling down and getting on with the job of working out how to build their new rink rather than wasting their time on this forum defending against John Minaars doom laden phrophesis and scaremongering.

You completely missed the point Wreckingball - a decent curling facility of 4 sheets which can replace the existing Kinross rink can be built to an excellent standard for £1.5-£2mill.

Therefore if the argument is about replacing the existing rink - thats the budget. Yet we are paying £3 mill more for the NCA part of it !!
- is it worth the money? I would say i could think about 90% of people would agree it isnt.

Here is another question -

If the Kinross curlers did not have a rink at present and they went along to the RCCC and asked to build one - what would the RCCC  / sportscotland answer be?

I will leave that one with you.

I suggest you use a search engine and find all you can about Ratho Climbing Centre and Drumoig Golf Centre. I have no axe to grind and I am not negative, so you're probably referring to someone else. However, may I remind you that we studied this problem of providing Kinross with an excellent facility in the greatest possible detail and produced plans and a strategy that would not have cost more than £2.5m (to include RCCC offices, a museum and the NCA requirements), based on every piece of information we could find. This was rejected because both the RCCC and MHG decided a six sheeter was what Kinross needed, without (to this day) providing the essential supportive evidence.

By the way, most of the curling rinks I know and see being built look like coo sheds, if not from the outside then from the inside. It works, and they don't cost £5m.