The rink lit up Nagle Place during the 2011 holiday season (Image: CHS)
The Cal Anderson “ice” skating rink backed by Capitol Hill real estate and development firm Hunters Capital and Sound Transit that took heat in 2011 for being glycol covered polymer — not true blue skating ice — won’t be back in 2012.
Organizers tell CHS that the focus is, instead, on trying to pull off a more ambitious true-ice effort for the 2013 holiday season.
Last year, the rink plan was developed as a way to draw families — and, with hope, shoppers — to Cal Anderson during the holiday season.
Sound Transit earmarked some $2.6 million in business $1.2 million mitigation money to support the Capitol Hill business community through the duration of the U-Link light rail construction. We documented some of the ways that money has been deployed over the years here. Slog put the price tag for the 2011 polymer rink at $100,000. UPDATE: Sound Transit asked us to clarify the amount spent on business mitigation and we’ve researched the number to update the documentation. The Chamber of Commerce clarified that the $2.6 million value originally reported by CHS in the past actually represented the Chamber’s initial ask. Sound Transit says the total budget — including construction work done at the site to mitigate impact — is closer to $1.2 million. Of that, only about $600,000 is being spent on direct business mitigation activities involving marketing and events.
Not everybody complained, by the way (Image: CHS)
Difficult to skate and a sometimes sticky experience thanks to the glycol used to slick up the vinyl, the rink struggled to catch on in 2011 despite backing from several merchants in the area, community promotions and sponsors including CHS. In a sign of things to come, Mayor Mike McGinn struggled to complete a circuit of the rink in its December debut.
We don’t yet have details on what the plans are for 2013. Around Pike/Pine, a check with a few neighborhood business owners and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce revealed no plans for any other holiday features for 2012. Along Broadway, the Broadway Improvement Area’s snowflakes went up over the weekend.
Smaller, grassroots efforts will also be, as usual, part of the effort to attract commerce to the Hill during the Holidays. CHS is again partnering with Babeland and the Chamber on the Shop the Hill effort. Open to any business around the Hill, it’s another way to spread the word about good, local ideas for gifts, etc. Best of all, it has a total budget of a few hundred dollars.
I’d walk through the park after work every evening last year, and more often than not pass by this sad little rink, terrible music blaring over an empty expanse of “ice” with a handful of people milling about the edges like a middle school dance.
The rest of the time there was no one there at all.
that plastic was weak.
I love the idea of creating a holiday activy / tradition for the hill. We usually go down to Seattle Center and skate but it is super crowded. We tried the “ice” rink last year and it was a big let down. My 7 year old daughter who loves pretty much everything said it was stupid. If it couldn’t win her over, it never had a chance.
That pathetic plastic “ice” rink was so grim, so awful, so depressing… so terribly, soul-destroyingly sad. It embodied so much of what I dislike about Seattle and about America and Americans in general. In particular, the deluded crowing about it here and elsewhere left me wondering whether it was possible to weep and vomit at the same time. Seeing those poor little kids duped into believing they were “ice skating” made me sick with rage and grief.
It was a horrifying thing, hideous on so many levels at once… Spiritually, emotionally, ethically, athletically, aesthetically, and economically bankrupt. When I found myself seriously considering vandalism, I changed my route home from work so that I’d no longer have to walk anywhere near it.
I would happily donate every spare dollar I could scrape together as well as volunteer to sit through godawful committee meetings to have an ice rink in Cal Anderson Park, but that abomination made me dream of molotov cocktails, not Hans Christian Andersen. I’ve tried and failed to convey my relief that I won’t have to suffer it again this year. Seattle winters are dreary enough, all by themselves.
Over-react much? (lol)
I agre it was a bad idea but “soul-destroyingly sad” is a bit much. :)
I think the dismal rink pales in comparison to your attitude about….. well, it seems, everything!
Bryan, I concur. They try. I give them that.
I DID try the rink last year, but only because I didn’t realize it was not even ice. It was the most awful experience I’ve ever had trying to have fun. I figured out how to push my skates to be able to glide around, but the poor unknowing children…with no parents on the “ice” to even guide them. They really knew no better – stomping around on their skates is very well their first memory of “ice skating.” Falling on that plastic was still as easy as on real ice, however, if that’s what you’re after. The momentum of your body trying to propel forward combating the paralysis of your skates caught in the plastic really helped that effect.
One thing I really liked was that the rink had a guy there to sharpen the blades. He sharpened my personal skates for free, even after I asked if he “legit’ knew what he was doing. He said their company travels all over the country to set up in different towns and cities.