Return of Rinks at Veterans Park in question this fall
NORWALK — The Rinks at Veterans Park, a hit among hockey players and local students and looming white elephant to motorists crossing the Stroffolino Bridge, may not return this fall.
More will be known Tuesday.
“We are not 100 percent certain,” said Norwalk Interim Director of Recreation and Parks Ken Hughes when asked Thursday if the rinks will return for a third season to the public park off Seaview Avenue. “I’m in a meeting next week. I’ll know for sure Tuesday. They requested the meeting.”
Hughes said the rinks’ operator requested the
meeting after he, as the city’s parks director, asked if the seasonal rinks would return to Veterans Memorial Park.
Ryan Hughes, president of SoNo Ice House, operator of the seasonal rinks and no relation to the parks director, couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.
During an informational meeting at the Walk Bridge Walk Center in SoNo on Wednesday evening, state and city officials explained drainage and parking lot improvements for Liberty Square. The latter project, slated to begin around Sept. 24, calls for closing the front two parking lots of Liberty Square for two to three weeks, and having motorists park free at the park across the street. A map showed the temporary parking in the area used for the seasonal rinks.
“We spoke to Ken (Hughes) at length about this and he agreed that the timing of the temporary parking at Vet’s Park for the Liberty Square project would work,” Norwalk Parking Authority Director Kathryn Hebert wrote in an email Thursday. “It is up to him where it makes sense to locate it.”
The winter of 2016/2017 marked the first year of a 10-year contract between the city and SoNo Ice House-affiliate The Rinks at Veterans Park, LLC. The city leases the parking lot at the west end of the park for $1,000 per year. The rinks are allowed to be in place every year, from Oct. 1 to March 30. Under the agreement, each Norwalk school student gets a free skating pass to be used before Thanksgiving or after the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
During the first season, around 3,000 students used their skating passes and more than 5,000 paying customers used the rinks, according to Michael Mocciae, parks director at the time.
The seasons rinks also have been used extensively by members of the Norwalk-McMahon hockey team, who last year hit the ice around Thanksgiving and afterward practiced five days a week, Monday through Friday.
Running the chillers that cool the ice rinks ran higher than expected during the first season, partly due to several warm weather spells. SoNo Ice House worked with the Third Taxing District Electric Department last winter to try to lower the electric bill.
So far, the city has received the base rent for allowing SoNo Ice House to use part of the park.
“Were getting $1,000 a year,” Ken Hughes said. “They never met the threshold for the profit-sharing.”
Last years, the rinks’ opening was delayed several weeks after hundreds of pieces of copper pipe fittings — part of the rinks’ cooling system — were stolen, requiring SoNo Ice House to replace the items.
The Rinks at Veterans Park have included food trucks, a heated viewing area, two regulation-size rinks and bathrooms. Trailers and shipping containers have been repurposed to serve as locker rooms, party rooms and skate rental. The rented tent covering the rinks can be taken down on short notice in the event of a storm or high winds.