The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The days of Franklin’s only ice rink could be numbered.
That’s because the building housing ProTecHockey Ponds Ice Center on Worlds Fair Drive is under contract to be sold, according to real estate web sites.
Vince Dominach, the township’s economic development director, said the property has been looked at by developers looking for warehouse space.
Dominach said that both developers who would retrofit the current space as a warehouse, or tear it down and build new, were interested.
The 55,800-square-foot building, located on four acres near Easton Avenue, was listed for sale by Morristown-based Cushman & Wakefield for $8,649,000. Documents indicate the property has been on the market since January.
A marketing brochure for the property, prepared by Cushman & Wakefield, shows the building has 40,000 square feet of warehouse area and 15,800 square feet of office space.
The building now features a main ice rink for hockey training, and two smaller rinks.
Company owners appeared before the Planning Board in 2014 seeking approval to build a 9,700-square-foot addition and combine the two smaller rinks into one large rink, so as to allow them to offer ice skating lessons. The number of parking spots was also to have been increased from 136 to 157.
It’s not clear if that work was ever done, since a schematic in the C&W marketing brochure still shows the two smaller rinks, and the number of parking spaces was not increased.
Joe Bucchino, ProTec’s general manager, declined to comment.
