PORT ANGELES — Today is lights day for the Port Angeles Winter Ice Village.
Volunteers are needed to help string 33,000 holiday icicle-lights for the 3,200-square-foot seasonal ice-skating rink project at 121 W. Front St., in downtown Port Angeles, Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce organizers said Tuesday.
“It’s a big day for decorating, a big day for lights,” said Marc Abshire said, chamber executive director.
Helpers can show up whenever it’s convenient between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. and work as long as they want, said Andrew May of Port Angeles, a decorating crew leader.
The Ice Village, a chamber project, will be open Nov. 23 — the day after Thanksgiving — through Jan. 6. It is expected to cost $150,000.
A grand opening is set for Nov. 30.
Tickets will be $15 for adults. A $10 daylong ice skating pass will be available to veterans, skaters 4 to 12 years old and seniors 62 and older.
Discounts will be offered to participants who bring their own skates, and Bobby the Seal and Tommy the Reindeer skating aids — like walkers for the elderly — will be available for children and adults prone more to falling than skating.
Hours will be from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, with approximately 30-minute closures about every 90 minutes to resurface the ice.
Estimates provided to the Port Angeles City Council with an application for lodging tax funds included 8,600 overall attendance and 1,000 skaters who will travel more than 50 miles to the Ice Village, 500 of whom will stay overnight in paid accommodations.
An average 200 daily visitors have been projected.
“A lot of this is guesswork,” Abshire said. “We could sell 300 tickets a day.
“This is a proof of concept work,” Abshire said, referring to term in which an experiment is conducted to test the feasibility of an idea or proposal.
“We are learning as we go along this year,” he said. “This is not just a one-year kind of thing.
“We’re hoping to make this a tradition in Port Angeles.”
A tent donated by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe was erected Tuesday that May will begin dressing up today, turning it into something far more than a shelter.
Lights will be strung inside the tent, transforming it into “an ice cave,” said May, a horticulturalist and the Peninsula Daily News’ Sunday gardening columnist.
“How cool is that?” he added.
May’s holiday-lights experience includes stringing decorations on the former John Hancock Center, a 1,128-foot Chicago skyscraper. He also decorated other downtown buildings on the Windy City’s Magnificent Mile, 1.5 million lights over four years, he said.
May will place 88,000 lights in 100-light strings throughout the Ice Village, including 3,800 for a candy-cane light pole.
“We’re not just putting Christmas lights on, we’re doing light sculptures,” May said.
He and others working on the project are volunteering their efforts, including the rink managers.
The chamber will pay for nighttime security, Abshire said.
“The biggest part to this story is, we wouldn’t be able to do it without all the donations from the community,” he said.
“Checks have been coming in for $100, $50 here, $5 there, $250 there.
“We’ve gotten all these donations from people.
“It’s just been wonderful, wonderful because it’s a community effort and we are trying to get the community involved, not just do this with corporate sponsorships.”
Abshire said organizers have reached 75 percent of their fundraising goal to cover costs of the project.
“Suffice it to say that we’ll need $150,000 to make this happen,” Abshire said.
Of that, $120,000 is being paid to the portable ice rink company Ice-America of Harbor City, Calif.
The cost estimate for the project has increased from the estimated $130,000 that was presented to the Port Angeles City Council in July, when the chamber was awarded $35,000 in lodging taxes for a down payment and rushed its request because of a looming deadline.
The increase from the original estimate was due to added costs such as security and other amenities, Abshire said.
The Ice Village will include a Santa Claus cabin likely open for visits with St. Nick on weekends, according to a schedule that Abshire said is still being worked out.
There also will be portable toilets — a public rest-room is directly across First Street — and a “warming cabin” so skaters can ward off the cold, Abshire said.
Abshire said minimal refreshments sometimes will be available, but a goal of the Ice Village is to draw consumers to the city’s commercial district.
More information for volunteers, participants and contributors is available at 360-797-9345, by emailing events@portangeles.org, and at tinyurl.com/PDN-IceVillage.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Volunteers Alex Walter and Peggy Norris help to create a rope of Christmas lights on Saturday that will be used to decorate the area around a seasonal ice skating rink and winter village being constructed in a city parking lot in the 100 block of West Front Street in downtown Port Angeles. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
