Markeshia Ricks Photo
Bombero with Beaver Hills Alder Jill Marks Monday.
The Board of Alders said yes to the city hosting a temporary ice rink in the East Shore this winter, but Mother Nature will make the final decision.
Alders voted unanimously Monday in favor of allowing the city to enter into a lease agreement with the town of Southbury for temporary use of its outdoor skating rink equipment.
But city Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees Director Rebecca Bombero said it will be up to the weather to decide when the temporary rink, which is slated to be hosted at Andrew Salpetro Skating Rink at East Shore Park, would actually be able to open.
“We can’t make an announcement until Mother Nature cooperates,” Bombero said after the meeting Monday. “This is the one time the parks director is cheering for cold.”
The decision to host a temporary outdoor rink came out of a challenge from alders and Mayor Toni Harp to figure out a way to hold skating in the city this year. The city shut down the Ralph Walker Skating Rink for this winter because it fallen into a state of disrepair, and because it was losing $50,000 to $60,000 last year. The city will make major repairs and evaluate how to improve the operation.
“There is a significant amount of work that needs to be done,” Bombero said of the 1080 State St. rink. “So it was really an opportunity to take a step back from that to really examine what type of programming, what type of facility, we’re looking for, so that we make the right investments. To do that we needed to close the rink for the year.”
Bombero said a consultant was hired to help determine the market for skating in the city, especially given that other towns in the Greater New Haven area have built new state-of-the-art facilities. She said the report came back favorable. She said that it was when she went looking for an alternative solution to the Ralph Walker Rink that she learned that Southbury wasn’t using its outdoor rink equipment.
“So instead of just asking, ‘What should I look into?’ we started conversations about leasing their equipment from them,” she said. “It’s being sponsored by the parks commission.” The commission is covering the $1,000 cost of the year-long lease that would be good through March 27.
Alders had a question about who would maintain the outdoor rink once it’s operational. An outside management company took care of the day-to-day operations of the Walker rink. That contract expired in August.
Bombero said that since it would have a much smaller operations schedule than Walker rink, part-time recreation staff would handle rentals and rules enforcement. Park maintenance staff will clean the bathrooms, scrape the ice and make sure it stays in good condition. She said that one of the reasons that Salperto was an attractive option to host the outdoor rink is that it has working bathrooms, which Walker rink no longer had.
But first the city’s going to need a blast of cold weather to freeze the water so there will be ice.