Prospect and McCarren Park Cancel Ice Skating; Christmas Is Ruined
Like so many beautiful promises broken to children by adults every holiday season, the outdoor ice skating rinks Brooklyn was expecting this winter are not to be.
No, after the New Year, we will have absolutely nothing at all to look forward to until spring. No romantic, mitten-holding skate dates, no need to keep brainstorming names for Brooklyn hockey teams. Nothing.
Plans for a rink on-site at the McCarren Pool as well as for new indoor and outdoor rinks in Prospect Park have both been shelved, for both logistical and financial reasons.
According to the McCarren team, it wouldn’t be possible to get the rink up and running until December, and a spokesman explained “we’d miss a lot of the holiday season.” As for the $74 million project in Prospect Park — meant to replace the Wollman Rink — plans simply ran over schedule, and putting up a temporary rink for the season was deemed too expensive.
Both rinks are aiming to be ready, instead, for the 2013 season. Which should be around the same time I can be expecting that pony the mall Santa said he could definitely make happen, oh, two decades ago. Fingers crossed.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
