Utah Hockey Club insider speaks on new grant program

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Hockey Club announced on Wednesday a new Growth and Renovation Grant program that will fund youth programs and ice rinks across the state.

Utah Hockey Club Insider Cole Bagley joined KSL NewsRadio with the details.

Below is a partial transcript of this interview as well as the full podcast.

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KSL NewsRadio edited the following transcript for brevity and clarity.

HOST JEFF CAPLAN: What is this program? Tell us a little bit more about what they’re doing.

GUEST COLE BAGLEY: It’s connected to the National Hockey League. So, since the inception of the National Hockey League Industry Growth Fund, they’ve actually been able to supply about $2 million across North America for programs such as this where they’re able to provide grants to local teams, ice facilities, other learning programs, to just really revamp and further the development of the game on a local scale.

CAPLAN: Where does the money come from?

BAGLEY: It comes from the NHL’s growth fund … And it’s just a great program especially for a place like Utah that, while the game is certainly growing at a rapid pace, it’s still in the early stages. And there’s awesome facilities throughout not only Salt Lake but North Salt Lake and down in Utah County.

And so what this is going to do is just help the little guy, help those smaller programs that could use a little bit of extra money to revamp their ice arena or help out a local team, stuff like that.

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CAPLAN: Will there be any new ice rinks, or simply updates to current ones?

BAGLEY: This is more of kind of a smaller opportunity for programs to revamp, whereas I believe that Ryan Smith’s initiative … he pledged about $10 million to any local recreational facilities or programs to build new ice rinks. He pledged $500,000 per group.

So that’s where I think the newer ice rinks are going to stem from, and hopefully we’ll start seeing those pop up, which is an incredible initiative from the Smith Entertainment Group, but this one is more of a smaller scale. But, still, a little bit of money goes a long way.

For more information on how to apply for the grant, visit here. Applications are due May 31, and grant recipients will be announced by June 13.

Listen to the podcast below for the full interview: