Place Bell

Place Bell is a multi-purpose sports facility in Laval, Quebec, Canada. It includes a 10,000 seat main arena which is the home of the Laval Rocket of the American Hockey League and two smaller ice rinks, one with Olympic size ice.HistoryThe former mayor of Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt, announced the project on February 13, 2012. The facility will be managed by Evenko, the same company that operates the Bell Centre in Montreal, home of the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League. As in the case of the Bell Centre, the naming rights for the Laval arena have been acquired by Bell Canada. The cost of the project has roughly doubled since it was first announced. Originally announced by Vaillancourt in 2012 to cost $92.6 million, the estimate was revised less than a year later to $150 million. In March 2014, Laval's new mayor Marc Demers estimated that the cost of Place Bell would double to $200 million, because of costs not factored by the previous administration. The Government of Quebec is committed to contributing $46 million; Demers has asked that the province assume more of the costs, as it has for other arena projects.Initial plans called for the arena to be built in the city's Quartier de l'Agora district, next to the Laval courthouse, but the unstable soil in that location led to a move. In October 2012, the city announced that the project will be located adjacent to the Montmorency station of the Montreal Metro Orange Line.