On September 1, Manatee County commissioners voted unanimously to kill an $80 million ice arena planned for Premier Sports Campus North, the county-owned parcel next to the Lakewood Ranch Library. It was the second time in two decades that a large ice rink proposed for this stretch of the Ranch has collapsed before a single skate touched the surface. The first attempt actually broke ground. This one never got past the negotiating table, and the way it died says more about how Lakewood Ranch decides what belongs here than the rink itself ever could.
The Vote That Ended It
Commissioner Bob McCann didn't hedge after the vote. "It's completely over," he told reporters, and county staff confirmed there was nothing left to negotiate with Icemann Development LLC, the Wesley Chapel firm behind the project known internally as Project Grace. More than 50 residents showed up in matching red shirts prepared to speak against the deal. Most didn't need to. It was clear from the discussion that commissioners were already leaning against the staff recommendation to resume talks, and Commissioner George Kruse openly asked why the item was even back on the agenda when nobody had brought forward new information.
The mood in the room wasn't purely adversarial. Lorraine Lakes resident Rosella Stromberg brought a mocked-up rendering of a park she'd like to see on the site instead, labeled "Kruse-McCann Park," which drew a laugh from the commissioners it named. What residents kept saying, across months of meetings, was some version of the same request: they wanted the land to stay a park, not become a regional draw.
What Almost Got Built
Project Grace was never a small ask. The plan called for a 190,000-square-foot multiplex with four ice sheets, including one rink ringed by roughly 2,500 permanent seats, built on 22 acres east of the library along State Road 70 near Lorraine Road. Icemann's CEO, Gordon Zimmermann, has experience with exactly this kind of build. His company constructed the TGH Iceplex, where the Tampa Bay Lightning train, and he called Lakewood Ranch "our prized area that we've always wanted to be in."
The financial terms explain why the county said yes the first time around. Manatee County offered Icemann land at $1 a year for the first three years to cover construction and ramp-up, rising to $100,000 annually starting in year four with 2 percent increases after that. County officials were pitching it as an economic development play, not just a rec center. Sports tourism already generates an estimated $400 million a year in Manatee County, and Premier Sports Campus alone contributed roughly $100 million to the local economy in 2025. The market research commissioned for the ice rink projected another $30 million a year in economic impact once it opened.
Why Some Residents Wanted It Anyway
The opposition wasn't unanimous among residents, either. Greyhawk Landing's Julie Fitzpatrick has twin 13-year-olds who play travel hockey for the Gulf Coast Flames, a team based out of the Ellenton Ice and Sports Complex, the only rink facility in the county. She's watched her sons' ice time creep later into the evening every season; this fall, practice doesn't start until 8:30 p.m., which is rough when she's up early teaching PE at B.D. Gullett Elementary. For families like hers, another sheet of ice closer to home wasn't a luxury.
Lakewood Ranch High School's hockey coach, Peter Sibner, made the scarcity case in blunter terms back in February, when the county first floated the idea. "I'm originally from Sweden, where we have 370 ice rinks for a population of 10 million," he said, comparing that to roughly 20 rinks across all of Florida's 22 million residents. Ice time in Florida runs him about $450 an hour. A rink he booked for a tournament in Quebec cost $250. Fitzpatrick put the appeal in simpler terms: "That's where the kids go to hang out."
That argument didn't lose because it was weak. It lost because of where the county wanted to put it.
The Line in the Master Plan
The most effective objection at the September meeting didn't come from a noise complaint or a traffic study, though both were raised. It came from Solera resident Tom Hirt, who reminded commissioners of something the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau's own Elliott Falcione had said earlier in the project's life: Premier Sports Campus South was meant for economic development, and Premier Sports Campus North was meant for the community. Hirt argued the ice rink, with its tournament draw and 2,500-seat arena, belonged on the wrong side of that line entirely. He called the megaplex "out of place in the middle of a residential park setting."
That distinction is the real mechanism here. Lakewood Ranch residents weren't rejecting recreation. They were rejecting a project built for visitors and tournament revenue on land they'd been told was reserved for them. It's a subtle but firm boundary, and it held even after commissioners had already voted once, in June, to move forward.
The Ranch's First Arena Also Never Skated
This isn't the first time an ambitious ice arena has tried and failed to land in this part of Manatee County. Back in 2005, construction actually began on the DVA Arena, a planned $70 million, 220,000-square-foot sports and entertainment venue with 7,400 seats at the northwest corner of White Eagle Boulevard and Rangeland Parkway. It was never finished. By 2009 the property was in foreclosure, and Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, the Ranch's own master developer, bought it back at auction and demolished the unfinished structure.
Two large ice arenas, two decades apart, both died before opening. The first collapsed on financing. The second collapsed on politics. What connects them is scale and purpose: both were built around the idea of drawing outside visitors to a facility sized for tournaments and crowds, dropped into a community that has consistently favored recreation its own residents actually use over venues designed to pull people in from elsewhere.
The contrast shows up almost too neatly in the calendar. One day after commissioners closed the book on the ice rink, the county opened the Athletics and Aquatics Center at the same Premier Sports Campus North, on September 2. That $44.2 million facility, with two pools and 24 pickleball courts, was itself eight years late against a 2017 agreement that had promised it in five, but it finally means East County swim families can stop driving into Sarasota for practice. The library next door opened back in January 2023 at a cost of $17.6 million, and a Sheriff's Office substation is due to wrap up construction on the same campus this October. All three are amenities residents use directly. None of them asks Lakewood Ranch to become a regional draw.
What Happens to the Land Now
Nothing about the site's future is settled. The county's own general development plan for Premier Sports Campus North, approved last fall, already allows for a fairly specific list of uses if commissioners choose to pursue them:
- A fire-rescue station
- Softball and baseball fields with concession stands
- Playgrounds and shade pavilions
- A dog park
- A fuel island
Commissioners don't agree yet on how to decide what actually gets built. Commission Chair Tal Siddique, whose district includes Cortez, has pushed for a public workshop process before, having overseen five community workshops after the county bought the site of the historic Seafood Shack there following Hurricane Helene damage. He wants the same approach here. McCann disagrees on process, though not on outcome. He'd rather see Falcione and the county's Sports and Leisure department bring commissioners a finished masterplan first, then take that to residents for input, rather than open with another open-ended round of ideas. Solera's Nicholas Keen has said the fight isn't fully over either way, since the same commercial pressure that produced Project Grace hasn't disappeared just because that particular deal has.
For now, the 22 acres east of the library sit exactly as they did before June: undeveloped, unresolved, and watched closely by the same residents who showed up in red shirts to make sure whatever comes next gets decided in the open.
If you're weighing what a corridor like Premier Sports Campus North means for property nearby, or you're trying to read how a fight like this one might shape the Ranch's next few years, Jane Ebury Sinclair is happy to talk through what's settled, what's still in motion, and what it's worth to you. Schedule a free consultation any time.
