The Town of Okotoks will soon have two new ice surfaces at their disposal after Town Council approved the construction of Twinning Pason Centennial Arena.

Council came to the decision on Monday, they had a couple of options for how to expand the home of Okotoks Oilers from adding two ice surfaces including one NHL ice surface and a leisure rink or go with just the one rink idea with multi-purpose rooms.

CAO Rick Quail says council decided on getting more ice available to skaters of all calibres and sports.

"The recommendation was that the scope of the Pason upgrades and expansion consist of one NHL ice surface and one leisure skating facility," he says

The two proposed plans for the approved Pason Centennial Arena Twinning, Town Council has gone with with option A

The original plan was to try and have two full extra NHL ice surfaces but after a parking and space study, that wasn't in the cards for the Town.

As for the design of the twinned arenas its still up in the air as to how the end product will look like and Quail says there will tender for designs coming soon.

"The Town is going to look at this in a similar fashion to the approach for construction that we've used on both the Southridge Emergency Services Facility as well as the Crescent Point Field House and that is a designed build," he says. "We will be issuing early in the new year a request for qualifications for design builders."

Quail says the Town hopes to break ground ASAP in order to fill the ice time shortages that are plaguing Okotoks now.

"The timelines for construction is preliminary, its early but we're hopeful that the new arena will be in place and operational for the 2017 hockey."