Mark and Brett and the Chain-Link Fence Moment at the Fire N Ice Arena Site (2019–Now)

Last updated on 17 Apr 2026

Some projects become part of the scenery of your life—so familiar you stop noticing them until one day, something shifts. For Mark and Brett, the Fire N Ice Arena site in North Phoenix has been that kind of landmark since 2019: a promise visible from the road, a place you kept checking on in passing, almost like you were keeping watch for the whole Valley.

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"Construction originally started around 2019 For The New Fire N Ice Arena In North Phoenix. Mark and Brett have been keeping an eye on this project since 2019 for years, so they had to make a quick detour today and check it out in person. This is the future Fire N Ice Arena site in north Phoenix. Construction originally started around 2019, then came to a halt during the COVID era. It sat quiet for years, changed hands, and had a lot of people wondering if it would ever get finished. Now it finally looks like the momentum is back. Even cooler—they’re bringing the first NA3HL junior hockey team to Phoenix. That’s a pretty big deal for local hockey and for growing the sport here in the desert. What a lot of people don’t realize is hockey has already been huge in the Valley for decades. From youth leagues to adult rec leagues to travel programs, the game has had deep roots here for a long time. And believe it or not, the Valley of the Sun is home to some of the nicest, most modern rinks in the country. According to their page, the arena is now slated to open in August. I snapped this photo today from behind the chain-link fence while passing through the area. Always fun seeing something that looked dead in the water finally come back to life."

That detour wasn’t about a building—it was about time

Mark and Brett didn’t “go see a construction site” the way people do when they’re killing time. You made a detour because you’ve been carrying this place around in your head for years. Since 2019, it’s been one of those North Phoenix stories you can point to with your finger—right there—where hope kept getting interrupted.

And when COVID hit and everything paused, the arena didn’t just stall on paper. It stalled in the way a quiet lot can feel like a question mark. The kind that makes locals trade theories—changed hands, delays, maybe it’s done for—until the doubts start to sound reasonable even if you don’t want them to.

What you saw through that chain-link fence

There’s something unmistakably Phoenix about your photo: the fence, the dust, the sense that you’re standing at the edge of a future that refuses to arrive on schedule. But for Mark and Brett, that chain-link fence is also a line between “remember when this looked dead?” and “wait—look at it now.”

Mark and Brett looking through a chain-link fence at the Fire N Ice Arena construction site in North Phoenix as one of them takes a photo. — Mark and Brett’s quick detour—proof, through the fence, that the project is moving again.

The momentum you noticed isn’t just construction equipment and fresh movement. It’s relief. It’s the feeling of being right to keep watching. Like you didn’t waste those years of checking in—you were just early.

Desert hockey, taken seriously

When Mark and Brett mention the first NA3HL junior hockey team coming to Phoenix, it lands like a personal victory—even if you’re not on the payroll and your names aren’t on the sign. Because you know what it means when a place invests in hockey here: it’s a statement that the sport isn’t a novelty, not an “out-of-town” thing we borrow for the winter. It’s ours.

You also said the quiet part out loud—the part people outside the Valley don’t always get. Hockey has been strong here for decades, threaded through youth leagues, adult rec nights, travel programs, and those early mornings when the sun is already bright but the rink air still feels like a different world. Mark and Brett aren’t imagining a scene that doesn’t exist; you’re recognizing one that’s been building all along.

The scale of the dream (and why it matters that it’s real again)

The Fire 'n' Ice Sports Arena is planned as a 250,000-square-foot multi-sport destination at 2727 W Bronco Butte Trail, near I-17 and Happy Valley Road—big enough to feel like it could reshape an entire corner of North Phoenix. Multiple NHL-size ice sheets. A 2,500-seat show arena. Courts for basketball, volleyball, and pickleball. Even an academy and a connected hotel.

But the heart of Mark and Brett’s memory isn’t a list of amenities. It’s the emotional whiplash of seeing an ambitious plan go quiet for years—and then, one ordinary day, finding yourself pulling off the road because you can’t not look. Because something that once felt “dead in the water” is moving again, and you want proof with your own eyes.

Some places teach you how to hope in small increments

Mark and Brett will probably remember the fence more than the blueprint. The quick detour. The sense of standing there as two long-time watchers, letting the present catch up to what you’d been expecting since 2019. It’s a strangely tender kind of satisfaction—nothing flashy, just that quiet internal click: it’s back.

And years from now, when the lights are on and skates are carving the ice and people talk about “when it opened,” Mark and Brett will have a different timestamp in mind—this moment, when the comeback was still half-hidden behind chain-link and dust, and you could feel the Valley’s hockey future starting to exhale.

Photos from the Memory