The City of Burlington has been implementing an energy management program aimed at saving energy for City facilities for several years. Our Corporate Energy and Emissions Management Plan outlines a path for City operations to be net carbon neutral by 2040. Part of this work included the construction of the Skyway Community Centre and Park as the City’s first low-carbon arena and community centre, which has recently celebrated its first birthday!
Skyway Community Centre and Park was the recipient of the 2026 Facility Design Award of Excellent from Parks and Recreation Ontario. This award goes to projects that invested in a robust consultation process, and demonstrate excellent public space design, uniqueness, innovation and creativity. The facility also received the Canada Green Building Council – Zero Carbon Building certification for design.
Skyway not only has state-of-the-art facility features, including an NHL-size ice pad and multi-use indoor walking track, but many sustainable, low-emission features hidden around every corner. Check them out!
Waste Heat Recovery Systems
The building’s primary source of heat is recovered heat from the refrigeration system that keeps the ice rink cold. This heat is moved throughout the building when it is available and used in various systems to heat both water and air for the building.
Geothermal Heating
When no recovered heat is available from the ice plant, the facility relies on 32 boreholes that are 150m deep located under the parking lot to provide heat for the building. The building systems also use the boreholes to reject heat in the summertime to cool the building.
Zero Emission Electric Ice Resurfacer
Similar to many of the City’s other arenas, the operations team uses an electric ice resurfacer at Skyway rather than the traditional compressed natural gas or propane machines which also results in improved indoor air quality.
Solar Ready Infrastructure
While the building does not yet have a solar array installed on its roof, Skyway was built with added structural capacity to allow for this system to be installed. The electrical infrastructure is also already in place to make sure that building disruptions are limited when a solar system is installed in the coming years.
Eco-Friendly Construction Materials
The building uses many sustainable construction materials; the most noticeable is the large amount of timber used in the construction of the building. The naturalized play area is also built mainly of timber construction, and several pieces of the play area are made from trees that were taken down on the site during the construction.
See For Yourself
Take Action Burlington! Visit the site to experience one of the City of Burlington’s sustainable, low emissions facilities. Collectively, we can make a difference.
