Pier ice rink still needs permits
SM PIER — After abandoning an effort last year to build Southern California’s largest outdoor ice rink in downtown Santa Monica, organizers have shifted focus and plan to open the world’s first fiber-optic rink on the pier this fall.
The rink, which still needs final permits and firm commitments from lead sponsors, will measure about 100 feet by 65 feet, roughly the size of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. It will be kept frozen by cooling pipes running beneath the ice.
Rental skates will be available for a few dollars, and an hour on the ice is expected to cost $8. It will likely cost more on weekends, when visitors will be able to glide with entertainment and skating celebrities, including players from the Los Angeles Kings — if a verbal agreement that was struck last week holds.
On Fridays, the rink will host champion figure skaters, and seats in the bleachers surrounding the rink will be sold off to spectators, said Todd Fraser, the rink’s lead organizer. About 175 seats will be available and, if plans pan out, a big-screen television will help broadcast what happens in the colorful, fiber-optic rink.
“The ice just explodes with color,” Fraser said.
Organizers, led by world champion skaters Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, decided on the pier after city officials couldn’t guarantee them a site at Second Street and Santa Monica Boulevard would be available this winter. Fraser, Babilonia and Gardner nearly opened the rink in that location last year but failed to secure adequate funding. So they immediately started fundraising for this year.
Intended to become an annual draw, the ice rink will sit on the western edge of the pier’s parking lot, in the same space used by the Twilight Dance Series and other events. About one-quarter of the parking spaces on the pier will be used.
Officials are banking on the ice rink as an added attraction for Santa Monica Pier and also a revenue generator that will earn three times the $6 daily parking rate for each space used, said Ben Franz-Knight, executive director of the Pier Restoration Corp., the nonprofit organization that manages the pier.
“That was one of our requirements, because parking down here is precious,” he added.
Fraser said he hopes to time the ice rink’s opening with downtown’s Winterlit, a marketing effort that includes five weeks of holiday-themed activities on the Third Street Promenade and in Santa Monica Place, the indoor mall. In previous years, Winterlit has included artificial snow storms, celebrity appearances, live music performances and other events. Also part of Winterlit are towering, 22-foot illuminated trees and plastic icebergs installed along the Promenade. The rink will be open until Jan. 3.
Gardner, who grew up in Los Angeles and lives in Marina del Rey, said in an interview last year he was eager to make the rink a reality.
“It’s like, ‘Wow, right up the street I can go (skate),’” he said. “It’s kind of unique having a rink in Santa Monica, where there are beaches and palm trees — but it’s a great holiday thing, I think, for the community.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 9, 2004. Read the original PDF.