On Sept. 2, 2025, Wings West, a local multi-use ice center, announced that a failure at the building’s ice production plant would result in the permanent shutdown of the facility, effective Sept. 12, 2025. All current programs are scheduled to be hosted at Wings Event Center for the foreseeable future.
One of the many programs being moved is the Kalamazoo United hockey team. Senior hockey player Griffin Moore was heartbroken to hear the news.
“It’s obviously devastating,” said Moore, who has played for the Kalamazoo United hockey team for nearly three years. “I’ve played there since I was four, so I mean, it’s pretty difficult to hear, but you know, make the most of what you’ve got.”
Fellow senior and hockey player Nicholas Perrin could see the closure coming after ice issues affected his Kalamazoo United summer hockey league.
“Stuff like that [similar organizations] had to end up getting transferred from Wings West to Wings Event Center. There were a lot of issues with keeping the ice frozen,” said Perrin.
Perrin has mixed feelings about moving to the Wings Event Center. He’s concerned about the smaller number of rinks, also known as ice sheets.
“Now that there’s one less ice sheet, there’s going to be a lot more teams trying to play on one ice, so there’s going to be less time and even later times than normal for players to get on the ice,” said Perrin. “There was one year where we had a practice at 11:45 at night, and we didn’t get home until one in the morning. Having to go to school the next day is rough on the players’ mental health.”
Despite the downsides, Perrin thinks there is one upside: sharing the ice with the K-Wings.
“It’s just a good experience, especially for young players who watched the K-Wings growing up. They’d really enjoy being on the same sheet of ice that they play on,” said Perrin.
Hockey isn’t the only sport that depended on Wings West. Figure skating programs also called the arena home.
Junior Margaret Letcher, who began skating at Wings West at the age of five, was upset by the news.
“I was very sad, we didn’t know it was coming. We knew that our practices were getting moved to the event center for maintenance, but we didn’t know that we would never come back,” said Letcher. “We skate at Wings Event Center a little bit every year, but our primary home rink was always Wings West, so I don’t really like the event center as much. It’s not as familiar,” said Letcher.
Moore, Perrin and Letcher expect to skate at Wings Event Center for the rest of their high school careers. However, the new Kalamazoo Event Center, expected to open in downtown Kalamazoo in the fall of 2027, will likely mark the end for the Wings Event Center.
According to Wings West, Wings Event Center will remain open through at least the 2027-28 ice season. However, the K-Wings will begin playing home games at the Kalamazoo Event Center after construction is completed, leaving the Wings Event Center without the K-Wings.
Perrin would have preferred that Wings West had tried to stay open for a couple of years longer.
“I wish that they had waited until that new rink downtown [Kalamazoo Event Center] was finished being built because then there would still be plenty of ice for other people,” said Perrin.
While this transition may pose some possible bumps in the road, many athletes that have called Wings West home will keep going. Moore is confident that students will persevere.
“It’s a new opportunity, but not the greatest of feelings,” said Moore. “It’s pretty tough to lose your second home, but we’ll bounce back.”
