During yesterday's municipal board meeting, Tingsryd's top politicians decided to tear up their previous decision to renovate and expand the old arena - and instead invest in a newly built one.

But the municipality does not intend to build itself, instead they want to get a contractor to build in the Mårslycke area and then rent it out to the municipality for a maximum of SEK 13.5 million per year.

In addition, the municipality must pay infrastructure costs such as walkways and sewers.

- One should not underestimate the importance of ice hockey, not least after the media attention that this issue has received.

But we will do it with wise trade-offs, says municipal councilor Mikael Jeansson (S) to SVT.

Inauguration 2025

On the fourth of April, the City Council will make a final decision on the matter.

Then it is important to find a contractor who wants to take on the construction.

There are two interested contractors, one of whom is from Tingsryd.

If everything goes according to plan, the arena will be inaugurated in 2025.

The question of a new hockey arena has been supported and soaked for several years, among which eight-year-old Wilmer from Växjö sent his own drawing of a new arena.

But it is not Wilmer who made the politicians change, according to Mikael Jeansson.

- No, we wanted this from the beginning, he says.

CLIP: Wilmer - 8 years old - has designed Tingsryd's new hockey arena

Javascript is disabled

Javascript must be turned on to play video

Read more about browser support

The browser is not supported

SVT does not support playback in your browser.

We therefore recommend that you switch to a different browser.

Read more about browser support

Hear Wilmer Ulvenhag talk about his very detailed drawing of a new hockey arena in Tingsryd.

Photo: SVT / Kajsa Oscarson