Pay to play
Council wants more details on plans to make temporary ice rink pay for itself
By Jake Armstrong 08/05/2010
If ice skating really is as much a part of this city as other sports, as those who’ve lobbied the city for a new rink for years say, the Pasadena City Council appears ready to make sure it pays its own way.
Faced with a proposal to float a $1.5 million loan to let Pasadena Civic Center officials build and manage a new temporary regulation-size ice rink in a pavilion at the Convention Center, council members on Monday unanimously agreed to let the Pasadena Center Operating Co. pursue a conditional use permit to build the $3 million rink.
But the council stopped short of green-lighting the loan before hearing more about a business plan showing the rink would in just five years recoup the $1.5 million the Civic Center would chip in and turn a $1.7 million profit in the rest if of its estimated 10-year lifespan. That review is scheduled for Sept. 20, about two weeks before the rink permit would be up for a hearing. A new regulation-sized rink would bring in much more hockey and figure skating activity and revenues could grow as much as 20 percent, according to Civic Center officials.
Councilman Steve Madison, who’s tried to get a new rink built for years, said the decision should finally move the proposal for a new rink forward, after previous decisions left it out in the cold.
“I think it is a very positive step,” Madison said.
In September, a public-private partnership proposal that would have produced a two-rink facility in East Pasadena failed to get enough support from the council. The city would have had put $8 million toward the $18 million project. By March, council members had shifted their focus to renovating the 35-year-old rink at the convention center, and ordered a cost analysis that found the $3.5 million tab was essentially cost prohibitive.
That makes the proposal for a temporary rink a significant savings, said April Hicks, a Pasadena resident and member of the citizens group pressing for a new rink. Plus, it would validate the efforts of those who have rallied for the past year to keep skating in Pasadena, she said.
“Give us our rink. We deserve it,” Hicks said.
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