PORT ANGLES — The success of the Winter Ice Village has inspired the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce to pursue a summertime roller rink in the same Front Street location.
Marc Abshire, chamber executive director, announced at Wednesday’s chamber luncheon that the preliminary organizational work has begun to get the rink operational in summer 2023.
”Our conceptual dates right now are from mid-June to mid-possibly-late August,” Abshire said.
The chamber already owns a significant amount of the necessary equipment, such as the side boards from the ice rink and the tent for cover, but it will contract with Ice America to get the proper flooring for the rink as well as skates and other equipment.
“We will contract with the same company that we rent the ice rink equipment from,” Abshire said.
“They also supply roller skating rink and equipment. We are now in conversation with them putting together a contract for the summer.”
The process to skate this coming summer will be very similar to the process to skate at the ice rink, with participants required to sign waivers for themselves and any participating minors.
Skates, both traditional roller skates and inline skates, will be available and people are allowed to bring their own if they have them.
“If you have some skates collecting dust in the attic somewhere, this summer is the time to break them out,” Abshire said.
The cost to skate this summer could be less than in the winter because less maintenance is needed to manage a roller rink than an ice rink, Abshire said.
“At this point, we don’t have definite costs,” he said. “We do know it won’t cost more than it does to ice skate.
“When you pay to skate at the ice rink, you know you can skate all day that day even if you leave and come back that day,” Abshire continued. “I’m not sure we will do the same thing for roller skating. We would like to, but we haven’t ironed out those details yet.”
Skate sessions at the ice rink are $15 for adults and children older than 13 and $10 for children ages 3 to 12.
“The cost of the roller skating rink is less than that of the ice rink for us to produce and maintain it,” Abshire said. “We don’t have to rent a chiller and all the other stuff that goes with an ice rink.”
Just like the Winter Ice Village, the roller rink will be run on an all-volunteer basis.
This year the Winter Ice Village initially struggled to get volunteers but is now nearly overwhelmed with them, with more than 150 people picking up shifts covering more than 2,000 hours of volunteer time so far.
“The day before the article in the PDN came out, we had an influx of volunteers,” Abshire said.
Abshire said the success of the Winter Ice Village over the last five years was the inspiration behind the chamber’s decision to take a chance on a roller rink with the hope of driving more people to downtown Port Angeles.
“The Winter Ice Village is doing better than any previous season,” Abshire said.
This year, as of Wednesday, the rink has had nearly 4,000 skaters with more than 6,000 skate sessions booked, he said.
“It takes 10 days to set up the rink and the key pieces have become pretty much modular. We’ve got better at everything we’re doing from setup and take down to improvements to our payment systems.”
The Winter Ice Village now uses the Square payment system, which generates analytics showing the ice rink’s most popular days and times, to how many people have skated since the rink opened this season.
“Our busiest days are Saturdays and Sundays, which isn’t too surprising,” Abshire said. “We expect to see more people during the week when school is out for the holidays.
While school has been in session, the rink has been opening at noon, but when school is out for the holidays, it will return to its 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule.
Over the last five years, the busiest day on the rink was the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year, 515 people took to the ice.
“That is the first weekend we are open usually, and we know people are excited,” Abshire said.
DJ Paniolo will be at the rink tonight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. celebrating the end of the school term and the beginning of the winter break.
On Wednesday next week, the Bremerton Figure Skaters Club will be at the rink to perform a selection of routines from their holiday show, Rock n Roll Christmas.
The demonstration is free and open to the public.
“We’ve done this every year and it’s usually very popular,” Abshire said.
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Reporter Ken Park can be reached at kpark@peninsuladailynews.com.
