The City of Ironwood and the Civic Center Board have announced the Pat O’Donnell Civic Center Ice Arena will soon be able to get some much needed improvements all thanks to a grant from the Land and Water Conservation Program through the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The $376,000 grant is a matching grant and will be enough to allow for the purchase a replacement for the outdated ice making plant, which is more than five decades old and still used a refrigerant that was banned in 2020. The new ice making system will cost around $750,000. Ironwood Community Development Director Tom Bergman says the timing of the matching grant is fortuitous, as the Civic Center has recently become the home of the Lumberjacks, a tier two hockey team that plays in the Superior International League. Jay Kivisto, the Civic Center manager, says these updates are long overdue, and with the new ice system events can be run longer in the spring and earlier in the fall and that now Ironwood will be competitive with other ice arenas in the area.