In the land of windchills and snowbanks — and dare we say the State of Hockey — the words sound almost blasphemous.
Outdoor rinks in the Twin Cities are drawing fewer skaters, and some are closing — and it's not just because of this year's frigid weather.
"It's down — it's not like it used to be," said Gregg Engle, Coon Rapids' parks and recreation supervisor. Coon Rapids closed more than half of its outdoor ice rinks six years ago because they were not being used, and the suburb needed to save money.
In Maple Grove, the city counted more than 32,000 users of city ice rinks during winter 1992-93, but in the two decades since the figure has topped 25,000 only twice. Two years ago, just 11,427 skaters used the city's eight ice rinks. In Shoreview, while dozens swam in an indoor city water park on a cold Wednesday in late February, the nearby outdoor ice skating rinks were dark and deserted. A sign in the window of a warming house, which features a fireplace, said it had already closed for the season.
Farmington is trying to get back to the levels it last saw in 2010, and was unable to keep its warming houses open longer this year because it could not find enough residents to keep them staffed. Even in West St. Paul, where city official Dave Schletty said the most popular outdoor ice rinks were still being regularly used, he conceded that "it's not the use we've seen 10 years ago — it's definitely less."
The struggle to get more people skating contrasts with some of the more publicized efforts to highlight Minnesota's love of all things outdoors. When the University of Minnesota's men's hockey team played a game outside at TCF Bank Stadium on a near-zero night in January, more than 45,000 fans attended, and many applauded the back-to-basics value of outdoor hockey.
The reasons for the lowered numbers are plentiful: More indoor arenas have been built, changing demographics — especially in Minneapolis and St. Paul — have meant the arrival of more minorities who are unfamiliar with or uninterested in the sport, and more parents are no longer willing to allow children to skate unsupervised at a city rink.
Still others point to the popularity of back-yard ice rinks. Stores now sell a custom 20-by-40-foot "Rink-In-A-Box" for as low as $340.