The acoustic tiles on the walls are worn, the carpeting is threadbare in some places, and a note posted along the edge of the Pasadena Ice Skating Center rink reminds skaters that "our nostalgic facility is very old." Hockey parents complain that the boards don't bounce right and that the puck often gets lost during games.
But on a recent "free skate" night, the magic of the ice was still alive and well.
Under a series of massive, rusting iron chandeliers, a toddler wrapped in a heavy purple jacket took tentative steps across the ice, a teacher encouraging her. A couple clasped gloved hands together as they slid effortlessly across the ice. And 9-year-old Emma Linde, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail, a velvet skirt peeking out from under a fleece jacket, practiced a series of complicated-looking moves: a camel spin, a toe loop and other twirls.
The aging skating rink is increasingly an anachronism in downtown Pasadena, which has seen dramatic redevelopment and growth in the last decade. The rink is across the street from the Paseo Colorado shopping mall and a few blocks from the refurbished California Mediterranean-style City Hall and bustling Old Pasadena business district.
Plans are underway to replace the creaky old rink with a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly ice center elsewhere in the city. It would include two NHL-regulation size rinks, a pro shop, party space and snack bar.
Pasadena is in the midst of a two-year, $150-million renovation of its convention center, of which the ice rink is considered a part. The city has long planned to return the 17,000-foot space to the use that it was originally intended. The space, with its dozen arching windows, was once a grand ballroom of sorts, attached to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, was home to everything from cotillions to tractor exhibits.
"I think it's inevitable," said Emma's mother, Leslie Croyder. "Everyone thinks this is closed already."
Michael Ross, chief executive of the Pasadena Center Operating Co., which runs the convention center, said that many of the former ballroom's old decorative touches are still there, ready to be reborn: hardwood floors where dancers once promenaded, those period chandeliers that hang above the ice rink, a little worse for wear, and decorative ceilings that are hidden now under a protective silverish coating. "It's going to take a lot of time and money," said Ross, "but we are going to work . . . to make sure that it gets back."
