The hockey association runs Anchorage's city rinks now, for $10 a year

Corrected on September 17, 2026 at 11:51 am: This article previously said the safety valves were a decade overdue. They were approximately 10 years old and five years overdue under the required replacement schedule.

Anchorage's two city-owned ice rinks, Ben Boeke and Dempsey Anderson, have been run since summer by a nonprofit arm of the Anchorage Hockey Association, under a deal that pays the city $10 a year. The city pays the nonprofit up to $450,000 to get started.

The Assembly approved it 12-0 in June, after the previous operator fell apart. A February audit found O'Malley Ice and Sports Center owed the city $360,000 in maintenance payments it had never made, and the city sent a default notice. That contract had been costing Anchorage about $100,000 a year on top of the unpaid subsidies. Three bids came in to replace it. The same vote gave a separate company, All In 49, a $2.9 million contract to run the Sullivan Arena.

The new agreement runs five years with five one-year renewals and hands the nonprofit, Anchorage Community Ice Management, everything from scheduling and ice allocation to concessions, maintenance and security. It also suspends the operator's usual 5 percent contribution to the arenas' capital reserve until 2029, so that money can go into repairs now. The association says all net revenue goes back into the rinks.

The first large bill has arrived. The Assembly takes up a $936,000 repair request from that same reserve Tuesday, including 16 safety valves that a state inspector found were about 10 years old and five years overdue for replacement.

The Anchorage Hockey Association was founded in 1961 by Dempsey Anderson, whose name is on one of the rinks it now runs.