Sweetwater Founder Investing in Ice Arena

The youth hockey program will be housed in the Thunder Ice Arena

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Fort Wayne-based Sweetwater Sound Inc., founder Chuck Surack and his wife Lisa have pledged $300,000 to boost construction of the Thunder Ice Arena at Trine University in Angola. Chuck Surack, whose father graduated from the school in 1956, calls Trine a "key part of the northeastern Indiana region that Sweetwater calls home."

The Thunder Ice Arena will be home to Trine’s men’s and women’s hockey teams, and house club and youth hockey programs for the Steuben County YMCA and local school corporations. It will also be open for public skating at designated times. In honor of the gift, the Sweetwater logo will be displayed below Trine’s at center ice.

The Suracks are prominent philanthropists in the Fort Wayne area, supporting more than 600 causes each year. They received the Outstanding Philanthropic Award in 2015 from the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

The gifts are part of Trine’s Invest in Excellence campaign. The school increased the campaign’s goal last month from $75 million to $125 million. The effort has raised about two-thirds of 

The arena is expected to be complete in the fall of 2017.
 

The gifts are part of the Invest in Excellence campaign, which the university expanded from its original $75 million to $125 million last month. More than $83 million — 66 percent of the final goal — has already been raised.