Since that hectic opening week last October, the building has been in constant use, serving both the Notre Dame and South Bend communities. CFIA has hosted a wide range of activities, including Notre Dame hockey games and camps, local high school and youth hockey programs, sled hockey, figure skating, public skating, physical education skating classes, learn-to-skate, learn-to-curl and other Compton Classroom instructional programs. The facility has also accommodated Notre Dame intramural ice hockey and broomball, women's club hockey and synchronized skating teams, commencement ceremonies and local meetings.

Youth hockey tournaments with participating teams from around the country managed by Hockey Time Productions, showcase tournaments hosted by the High Performance Hockey League, Bauer Select camps, Chicago Mission games, the United States Hockey League (USHL) have also been patrons of the CFIA in its inaugural season.

CFIA features two sheets of ice - the 200' x 90' Charles W. "Lefty" Smith Jr. Rink that serves as the home of the Notre Dame hockey program and a 200' x 100' Olympic-sized sheet. The "Lefty" Smith Rink has a capacity of 5,022 (4,500 chairbacked seats and 522 standing-room spaces) while the Olympic-sized rink has seating for approximately 350.

Prior to moving into CFIA, the Joyce Center Rink serviced the Notre Dame community. Opened in 1968, the Joyce Center seated 2,857 for hockey and was the home of the Irish for 44 years.
While Notre Dame hockey is the main tenant of the building, CFIA has become much more than that. The facility is now a community center and a meeting place for the entire Michiana area that includes northwest Indiana and southern Michigan. Irish athletics director Jack Swarbrick alluded to that community during the building's dedication ceremony on Sept. 11, 2010.

"There's a limit to how much the community can use our dormitories and our classrooms and our laboratories, but the athletic facilities can be a special point of contact," Swarbrick said. "I hope we win national championships with teams that train here and I hope we build new programs for our athletes and our students. But the ultimate success of this facility will be if we inspire a young boy or a young girl from the community to shoot higher, if we challenge them to be better people because they spend time on our campus. Then we've realized the potential of athletics at Notre Dame."

From the time CFIA opened, the local community has made the most of the opportunities the building has presented. "The Compton Family Ice Arena has a lot to offer a wide variety of audiences," says Mike McNeill, director of programming and instruction for the facility.

Despite opening in late October 2011, CFIA has turned in some impressive numbers. "We had over 14,000 people come through the building for public skating between the end of October and the end of June. That's a big number," McNeill says. "We had over 600 kids participate in our learn-to-skate program in its first year, and our learn-to-play hockey program had 180 kids.