A few weeks ago, I walked past the block-long “ice bar” on the north end of Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, a fun and sparsely attended gimmick that was none-too-slowly melting into a puddle. It made me ponder the fates of both Minnesota winter and our downtowns, and I came to back to a question a friend has asked me this winter: Why isn’t there an outdoor skating rink in downtown Minneapolis?
It’s an odd winter to be thinking about ice skating, with climate change setting a new normal for the pace of loss. It’s been a profoundly unsettling winter; the kind of pattern that upends identities and ecosystems alike. Long-standing traditions like the St. Paul Winter Carnival might think about rebranding as a funeral, perhaps, Vulcans contented, unchallenged and bored.
In this moment when boosters and mayors are mourning the loss of downtown vitality, at precisely the same moment when ice skaters are mourning the loss of outdoor ice in the region’s many parks, a marriage of the two needs might be the perfect thing. Why not create an ice rink, in the most public possible place, like the middle of Nicollet Mall or somewhere near the Gateway Park flagpole?
The urban skating gold standard is New York City’s rink at Rockefeller Center, the art-deco complex in Midtown Manhattan. The site of countless television and film meet-cutes, the rink is sunk below the sidewalks at the center of the mixed-use complex, creating an ideal public space where winter is on full display. People watching people watching people is the heart of any great city, and ice skating adds a rare artistic grace to the whole affair.
Despite our claim to the heart of American winter sports, Minneapolis has never had anything comparable. The closest thing was around for years in St. Paul, where Wells Fargo sponsored an outdoor rink called “winter skate” next to the Landmark Center. It brought people into the downtown to skate and brought life into the heart of the city. That all ended during the COVID pandemic, and much to the dismay of downtown St. Paul boosters, Wells Fargo hasn’t funded the event again.
The key is the refrigeration.
“The idea of having a downtown skating rink like in the old days doesn’t work anymore. You need to have a refrigerated rink in order for it to work,” said Joe Spencer, the executive director of St. Paul’s Downtown Alliance, the local business improvement district. “If you’re looking to make skating possible from Thanksgiving through the Winter Carnival, that’s a long stretch. You really need a refrigerated rink.”
According to Spencer, sponsoring an ice rink with cooling compressor and all the logistical works ballparks around $200,000 for a winter skating season. Given that, the Downtown Council and the city of Minneapolis spent more than three times that amount for its “Warehouse District Live” program through summer. While this is certainly beyond my budget, it seems like an achievable goal for downtown boosters in either town.
In St. Paul, they’d love to reboot their Winter Skate event, if they can find a sponsor. Spencer also pointed to other models beyond the traditional nova. In some cities, they have skatable ribbons forming trails that actually go places throughout a city. Winnipeg, Manitoba, seven hours to the north, turns the Assiniboine River into a long linear skating park through the city, and the small Minnesota town of Warroad on the Canadian border has a similar five-mile-long ice route along their riverfront.
That’ll never happen in the Twin Cites, where the Mississippi has always been dangerous. But an outdoor downtown rink might be the next best thing.
“So far we haven’t identified a donor or sponsor willing to contribute what it would take to get a refrigerated rink back in downtown,” explained Spencer. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think we will. It’s such a wonderful agent of vitality. We’d love to do it, but it’s been a few years of transition, and they’ve been more fluid than anybody imagined.”
Moving into the future, it’s all but guaranteed that melty climate change winters will become ever more common. Months will go by where people who grew up skating in their neighborhoods will be jonesing for a place to remember what it feels like to glide on a frozen pond. What better place than downtown Minneapolis, where activating the streets have become an even greater priority?
St. Paul, too, should figure out how to bring back one of its most iconic scenes, skaters twirling or learning to stay upright in the shadow of one of its most beautiful buildings. It’s something that Joe Spencer is thinking about these days, even as the mercury hits 50 degrees in February. He’s even pondering introducing skating into the rest of the calendar.
“Imagine a new location where we could do the winter rink, (but) we’d also think of that not just as a winter rink but as a year-round rink,” said Spencer. “In the winter months, it would be refrigerated, and in the summer months it would be roller rink. We’ve had a lot of success w roller disco events in Rice Park on Friday nights in the summer. Great way to animate the space. There’s still a constituency of people who want to get out and would love a beautiful environment like we have in Downtown St. Paul.”
Why not, I say? There certainly plenty of space and appetite in downtown for frozen experimentation.
Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.
