HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex (also known as The Aud) is a multi-use municipally-owned facility in Kitchener,
Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...
, Canada. The complex is located on East Avenue, near the Ottawa Street interchange on the Conestoga Parkway. The complex includes "The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium" with the ''Dom Cardillo Arena'', two smaller community arenas the ''Kinsmen Arena'' and ''Kiwanis Arena'', the ''Jack Couch Stadium'' baseball park, ''Centennial Stadium'' (track and field, soccer / football) and a skatepark outside the stadium.


Kitchener Memorial Auditorium

The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, or The Aud for short, includes a main
ice rink An ice rink (or ice skating rink) is a frozen body of water or an artificial sheet of ice where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The growth and increasing popularity of ...
(the Dom Cardillo Arena) with a
seating capacity Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that ...
of 7,234 and a total capacity of 7,777, including standing room. It is home to the
Kitchener Rangers The Kitchener Rangers are a major junior ice hockey team based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. They are members of the Midwest Division of the Western Conference of the Ontario Hockey League. The Rangers have won the J. Ross Robertson Cup as OHL ...
of the
Ontario Hockey League The Ontario Hockey League (OHL; ) is one of the three major junior ice hockey leagues which constitute the Canadian Hockey League, alongside the Western Hockey League and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. The league is for players ag ...
and the KW Titans of the Basketball Super League. The original arena was built in 1950 and has been expanded three times since then. The Aud hosted the
2008 Memorial Cup The 2008 Memorial Cup was played in May 2008 in Kitchener, Ontario at the Memorial Auditorium. It was the 90th annual Memorial Cup competition and determined the major junior ice hockey champion of the Canadian Hockey League (CHL). Kitchene ...
from May 16 to May 25, 2008, with 437 additional permanent seats being added. The Aud previously hosted 1962 Memorial Cup,
1975 Memorial Cup The 1975 Memorial Cup took place May 3–11 at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex in Kitchener, Ontario. It was the 57th annual Memorial Cup competition, organized by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) to determine the cha ...
and 1984 Memorial Cup games. Other notable
junior ice hockey Junior ice hockey is amateur-level ice hockey for 16 to 20 year-old players. National Junior teams compete annually for the IIHF World Junior Championship. The United States men's national junior ice hockey team are the defending champions from ...
events include the 1995 and 2003 CHL Top Prospects Game, the 1980, 1985, 1995 Ontario Hockey League All-star games, and the 1986 World Junior Championships. During the 1986 tournament, Canada defeated
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
18-2 at The Aud, setting a record for most goals for, and largest margin of victory by the Canada national junior hockey team at the tournament. The facility has also hosted major events such as: the Four Nations Cup, Homesense Skate Canada International, the Scott Tournament of Hearts,
World Junior Figure Skating Championships The World Junior Figure Skating Championships are an annual figure skating competition sanctioned by the International Skating Union (ISU). Medals are awarded in men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance. The first World J ...
,
WCW Monday Nitro ''WCW Monday Nitro'', also known as ''WCW Nitro'' or simply ''Nitro'', is an American professional wrestling television program that was produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and broadcast weekly every Monday night on TNT (American TV ...
and
World Wrestling Entertainment World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is an American professional wrestling promotion. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a majority-owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. A global integrated media and entertainment company, ...
Its also hosted concerts by notable acts such as:
Pearl Jam Pearl Jam is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. One of the key bands in the grunge, grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries from the early 1990s, ...
,
Backstreet Boys Backstreet Boys (often abbreviated as BSB) are an American vocal group consisting of Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, AJ McLean, and cousins Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson (musician), Kevin Richardson. The band formed in 1993 in Orlando, Flori ...
,
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
,
Bryan Adams Bryan Guy Adams (born November 5, 1959) is a British and Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million album, records and Single (music), si ...
,
Elton John Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship have had a significant, lasting impact on the music industry, and his songwriting partnership with l ...
,
Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...
,
Hilary Duff Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress, singer, author and businesswoman. She is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Hilary Duff, various accolades, including a World Music Awards, World Mus ...
,
INXS INXS (a phonetic play on "in excess") were an Australian rock band, formed as the Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney. The founding members were bassist Garry Gary Beers, main composer and keyboardist Andrew Farriss, drummer Jon Farriss, gu ...
,
Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin were an English rock music, rock band formed in London in 1968. The band comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones (musician), John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. With a he ...
,
Michael Bublé Michael Steven Bublé ( ; born September 9, 1975) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Regarded as a pop icon, he is often credited for helping to renew public interest and appreciation for traditional pop standards and the Great American ...
and
The Tragically Hip The Tragically Hip, often referred to simply as the Hip, was a Canadian rock band formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1984, consisting of vocalist Gord Downie, guitarist Paul Langlois, guitarist Rob Baker (known as Bobby Baker until 1994), bassis ...
It has also been used for
Toronto Maple Leafs The Toronto Maple Leafs (officially the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club and often referred to as the Leafs) are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto. The Maple Leafs compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the A ...
training camps, and
NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...
exhibition games.


Seating

Approximate capacities: * 7,777 - Hockey * 7,312 - Basketball * 8,462 - End stage concert The Aud features 26 luxury suites and seated full-service restaurant.


History

The current Aud replaced an earlier facility, the Queen Street Auditorium, at the corner of Charles St., built for $55,000 in 1904. Use of that building ended after a major fire in 1948. In its early days, the natural ice surface of the old Aud supported hockey, with the first game seeing Berlin trounce Brantford 7-3, in front of an audience of 2,000. Artificial ice was installed in 1927 and this was the home of the Waterloo Siskins, a team formed in 1937. The Kraut line also played at this facility. "It was home to me and it was a palace, as far as I was concerned," Milt Schmidt recalled in 2016. By the time of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
however, when most young men were overseas, so the building was used primarily as a
Big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
era dance hall. Another factor in this change was that Silverwood Dairies, which had provided the refrigeration for the ice surface, moved to another location in 1938, ending the availability of inexpensive artificial ice. Afterwards, the city was without a large indoor ice surface until the new Aud was built.


Renovations

In 2008, Kitchener Rangers president Steve Bienkowski stated that the Rangers had begun the process of researching the possibility of building a new arena with larger capacity. The Rangers had sold out almost every game for the previous 3 years, and the waiting list for season tickets had been well over the cap of 4,750. Mr. Bienkowski stated the Rangers would like a building with at least 10,000 seats. Bienkowski presented the City of Kitchener council a report on expanding the Aud. The expansion would have included another level of seating as well as an expanded concourse. The expansion proposed to add 3,500 seats to the facility to make total seating capacity around 10,500. The estimated cost was $44 million. This expansion option was the favoured route for the team, as it was estimated that a new arena with a larger seating capacity (about 10,000) would cost $150 million. City council made it clear they would not finance such a large project unless private companies were adding money to it but had been very favourable at the idea of expanding the city-owned building. The plan includes raising the roof on the building, a process which had been done before with the
Buffalo Memorial Auditorium Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, colloquially known as The Aud, was a multipurpose indoor arena in downtown Buffalo, New York. Opened on October 14, 1940, it was home to the Canisius Golden Griffins men's basketball, Canisius Golden Griffins (Nationa ...
in the early 1970s. Bienkowski and the city came to an agreement involving the Aud being expanded by 1,000 seats with a concourse on the third level. The expected cost for this expansion was roughly $9 million, with the Kitchener Rangers Hockey Club paying for it, via a loan from the City of Kitchener. Work began in February 2012 and was completed by the end of that year. Upon completion the seating capacity is 7,234, including about 920 new seats in the regular seating area and 80 new seats in new suites, with a standing room capacity of 7,777. As of January 2020, talks are underway by the City of Kitchener to move the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium to a new location as the building nears a time where more renovations are required to the facility.


Centennial Stadium

Centennial Stadium was a football/soccer stadium next to The Aud. The stadium seated 3,200 spectators and was the largest stadium in Kitchener. The stadium was additionally noteworthy for its location with easy highway access from Waterloo, Guelph, and Cambridge and its track and field facilities. In the spring of 2011, the grandstand at Centennial Stadium was deemed unsafe and ultimately condemned. On June 12, 2012, Kitchener City Council voted 6-4 to demolish the grandstand, it has since been torn down. Jacob Hespeler Secondary school has recently added an artificial turf field as well as an improved track surface, in order to fill the gap that was left after Centennial was demolished.


Jack Couch Park

Jack Couch Park is a 1,400-seat
baseball park A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into two field sections called the infield and the outfield. The infield is an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined in part ba ...
in
Kitchener, Ontario Kitchener is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario, about west of Toronto. It is one of three cities that make up the Regional Municipality of Waterloo and is the regional Administrative centre, seat. Kitchener was known as Berlin until a ...
that hosts the Kitchener Panthers of the Intercounty Baseball League.


Gallery

The Aud.jpg, Exterior Kitchener Memorial Auditorium interior (1).jpg, Interior Prior to 2012 Addition Kinsman Arena - Kitchener Memorial Auditorium - Kitchener, ON.jpg, Kinsman Arena, home to the Kitchener Dutchmen Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex - Kitchener, ON.jpg, Facade


See also

*
List of indoor arenas in Canada The following is a list of indoor arenas in Canada with a capacity of at least 1,000 for sporting events. The arenas in the table are ranked by capacity; the arenas with the highest capacities are listed first. Current arenas Canada's largest indo ...


References


External links


The Aud
- Official website
City of Kitchener
- City of Kitchener

- The OHL Arena & Travel Guide {{Authority control Baseball venues in Ontario Boxing venues in Ontario Ice hockey in Kitchener, Ontario Ice hockey venues in Ontario KW Titans Music venues in Ontario National Basketball League of Canada arenas Ontario Hockey League arenas Soccer venues in Ontario Sports venues in Kitchener, Ontario Tourist attractions in Kitchener, Ontario