DAWG NATION ICE ARENA

The first facility of its kind in the country, the Dawg Nation Ice Arena is a three-sheet complex in Caste Pines, CO, designed to serve the specific needs of differently abled hockey players and ice skaters.

This groundbreaking facility has its origins in a tight-knit adult recreation league hockey team—a group of men who began playing hockey together nearly two decades ago. Since then, Dawg Nation has become one of the region’s largest adult hockey organizations. When the team tragically lost a beloved teammate to illness in 2011, the organization took the unique step of forming a charitable foundation in his memory. Dawg Nation Hockey Foundation is a charitable foundation that supports hockey families facing injury, illness, and loss with resources and direct aid. Over the past several years, the foundation is looking to make an even bigger impact on Colorado’s hockey community by developing its own three-sheet hockey complex that serves hockey players of all ages and abilities, including Colorado Sled Hockey.

With experience designing ice hockey arenas in the region, including the Edge Ice Arena in Littleton, where the original Dawg Nation team first played together, MOA took on the role of designing this unique facility. Drawing on the principles of universal design to develop the design, the team conducted extensive interviews and workshops with differently abled players, coordinated with hockey sled manufacturers, and toured existing retrofitted hockey facilities elsewhere in the country. The three-sheet facility will serve a range of different uses, including adult recreation leagues, youth hockey, local high school teams, figure skaters, public skaters, blind hockey players, and sled hockey players. Located in Castle Pines on property donated by the town, the design and construction of the facility is possible in part through over $10 million of in-kind donations from designers, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and vendors, including from MOA.