The former ballroom space was turned into an ice rink in the mid-1970s, after a famed rink on nearby Arroyo Parkway, where Olympian Peggy Fleming had once trained, closed. At the time, the city was in the process of building its convention center, and planners thought that the ballroom space would not be needed once the convention center was complete.
Over the last 30 years, generations of Pasadena children have skated on the ice, held birthday parties on an upper floor overlooking the rink and sometimes glimpsed world-class skaters in their midst. Mirai Nagasu, the 2008 U.S. ladies national champion and an Arcadia resident, trained at the rink.
But for all the nostalgia, there is general agreement that Pasadena deserves a better, more advanced, skating rink.
About 10 years ago, city officials started thinking about what to do about the old ice rink, which they deemed increasingly inadequate. It was too small, lacked space for spectators, and the historical aspects of the building prevented much-needed modernization.
They began planning a new facility, to be located elsewhere in the city -- eventually deciding on a strip of land in East Pasadena. The design calls for a 65,000-square-foot facility, complete with a mezzanine for spectators. But the process has been anything but easy.
The location, away from any street or utility access and adjacent to a flood-control channel, required about $4.5 million in site-specific upgrades, including a special piling foundation to support the weight of the rink.
And after the budget of the project jumped dramatically last spring, the City Council rejected all developers' bids on the project as too costly and directed the project's architect to come up with changes that could lower the total cost.
"You won't see any difference in the size of the rink," said Martin Pastucha, director of the city's public works department. "You will see a difference in the exterior treatments. We didn't dumb it down; we became a little more economic, with better use of the entrances and of the framing itself."
Still, the project's total budget now is estimated to be $26 million, with construction costing $19.5 million--up from an initial $12 million. And earlier this week, Pasadena City Manager Michael J. Beck urged city officials to think about how they could find money to help jump-start the construction process in light of the increasingly tight credit market. Three-million dollars have been set aside for the project from the convention center renovation, and the rest of the money would have to be raised by the city.
