Wellesley council renews Applejacks’ lease of dressing room and community room at Bill Gies Recreation Centre

The Wellesley Applejacks dressing room in Bill Gies Recreation Center. Google screenshot photo

By Galen Simmons

The Wellesley Applejacks will pay a flat fee of $4,000 plus HST for the exclusive use of the team’s dressing room and use of the community room on game nights at the Bill Gies Recreation Centre for the 2024-2025 season.

At Wellesley Township council’s regular meeting Dec. 10, council agreed to renew the Applejacks’ lease agreement with the town retroactive to the beginning of the 2024-2025 Provincial Junior Hockey League (PJHL) season.

“The Wellesley Applejacks have requested a flat-rate fee for the use of their dressing room and the use of the community room for their game nights,” Wellesley director of recreation Danny Roth told council. “The dressing room is occupied by the team on a year-round basis with the community room being used on game nights only.”

As this lease agreement is for the first full season the Applejacks will be in the new Bill Gies Recreation Centre, Roth said the flat fee was tentatively negotiated with the team to give it time to assess its operations in the new recreation complex before committing to a longer-term agreement ahead of the 2025-2026 season.

For comparison, the standard fee for the community room would be $250 plus HST for the entire day of each of the 21 home games. This lease agreement allows for flexibility, permitting staff to rent the room up until a few hours before Applejacks games.

During the discussion at the Dec. 10 council meeting, Coun. Shelley Wagner asked Roth how the township would handle another request for exclusive use of a dressing room at the Bill Gies Recreation Centre.

“If we’re going to grant (the Applejacks) access, someone else could come along and say they want access in a similar manner,” Wagner said.

“It is widely known throughout the Ontario Hockey Association that junior teams typically get their dressing rooms in their home facilities – they get a dedicated space,” Roth responded. “We did a lot of research in this matter to see what others are charging their teams to use those rooms, and it’s honestly all over the map with the majority of those we reached out to saying there’s no charge to the team to use the room. There are some models where they’re charging a square-footage price, but the majority had no charges for those rooms. So, it is a different model for junior hockey than it is for minor hockey, and that’s across arenas in Ontario.”

In addition to paying the $4,000 for use of the dressing room and community room this season, Roth said the Applejacks are also one of the biggest ice users at the recreation centre, expected to spend roughly $40,000 on ice time prior to playoffs.

As part of this new lease agreement, council also asked staff to include a provision that, if the Applejacks were to disband as a team, they would repair any damage to the dressing room made during their tenure.