Last semester, the Macalester student body voted to put $50,000 in rollover money towards construction of an ice rink on campus. Now the Macalester Ice Rink Committee faces a number of barriers to getting the rink off the ground, including a disagreement with Facilities about the project’s feasibility.

“At the moment, the ice rink committee is trying to collaborate with Facilities to find the right place for the rink,” Ice Rink Commissioner Kai Wilson ’14 wrote in an email. “We are hoping to have the rink up by next winter.”

Mark Dickinson, Director of Facilities Services, said that “there are some challenges with an ice rink right off the bat,” and that the project “isn’t as easy as everyone seems to think.”

According to Dickinson, the primary challenge of the proposed project is that there isn’t space on campus near a reliable water source and a site for equipment storage.

Shaw Field, Old Main Lawn and the football field have all been proposed as potential ice rink sites, but each poses its own problems. Shaw Field is not flat and does not have a storage location nearby for equipment. There is a slope between Old Main and the bell tower that drops about a foot and there is no water supply or storage location nearby.

“What seem like flat spaces on campus really are not flat,” Dickinson said.

Jesse Carroll ’13, one of the students who proposed the ice rink idea for the rollover ballot, said that the Associate Director of Athletics Vanessa Seljeskog denied the use of the football field because it could be damaged.

If the resources are available, it is plausible to account for the slope on Shaw Field with more water in the “deep end,” Dickinson said. However, there is nowhere to store the hundreds of feet of approximately one-inch thick hose needed to fill the rink. Dickinson added that a hose would need to be stored onsite to build up the ice once or twice every night throughout winter.

“This is not something that Facilities wants to take on,” Dickinson said. “Unless we were directed by the administration that this is something we will do, then we would do it, but I would raise all these questions with administration before we were to do it. I think this is a lot of time and effort and money to accomplish something that has this many challenges, but has a relatively limited amount of use.”

Dickinson added that the majority of the student body leaves campus during January, which is prime ice rink season. Carroll feels that the rink would receive use from the community of students on campus over January break, especially upperclassmen that stay in their off-campus housing. He said that although building an ice rink presents considerable challenges, he felt that there was “a lot of money to play around with.”

MCSG put together the Ice Rink Committee last semester to research these challenges and purposefully work to address staff concerns. Wilson wrote that the committee has started researching these challenges in the few meetings they have had. Carroll feels that the rink would receive use from the community of students on campus over January break, especially upperclassmen that stay in their off campus housing. He said that although building an ice rink presents considerable challenges, he felt that there was “a lot of money to play around with.” MCSG put together the Ice Rink Committee last semester to research these challenges and purposefully work to address staff concerns. Wilson wrote that the committee has started researching these challenges in the few meetings they have had.

“While the new fire hydrant by Shaw Field helps with questions about the water source for the rink, outside help from the fire department or the city of St. Paul might be needed,” Wilson said.

History of ice rink plans
Dean of Students Jim Hoppe has seen and advised several ice rink proposals over the years. Hoppe said that these same challenges have stopped several ice rink projects in the past.

“If it was an easy project to do, it would have been done a long time ago,” Hoppe said.

Facilities raises some legitimate concerns that the committee would need to address in order to successfully build the rink, Hoppe said. In addition to the location challenges, Hoppe said that Facilities does not currently have the resources to maintain the rink. He suggested that the Ice Rink Committee research rink maintenance for the number of staff hours and how often water needs to be reapplied. Then the committee could explain and provide resources for the additional ice rink duties expected of Facilities Services.

“It could very well turn out that after they do their research this committee makes the decision that the challenges outweigh the benefits,” he said. “I think they’re still in that investigation stage of figuring it out.”

If the committee decided not to build the rink, he said that the money would most likely go instead toward renovating 10K, in the basement of Dupre. Dickinson was contacted about the project last November, at which point he explained these challenges to the students that initially proposed the project: Patrick Murphy ‘12, Mulugetta Fratkin, Tyler Hill, Stephen Tyndel and Carroll.

(Editor’s note: Murphy is a Managing and Sports Editor for The Mac Weekly.)

“I clearly was not saying it was easy to do, or we agreed to it, or approved it or endorsed it,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson has raised these same issues to each ice rink proposal in the past.

“I’ve had conversations with students over the years, so this is nothing new,” he said.

The MCSG minutes from Nov. 16, 2010 make reference to Dickinson raising similar issues about space and storage, noting that the idea of an ice rink “…got a red light from facilities.” MCSG President Kathy Kim ’12 wrote in an email that the Ice Rink Committee felt the rollover funding would purchase the necessary materials to overcome the issues raised at this MCSG meeting.

“Currently, we are working on getting Facilities all the specifics and the detailed information necessary to make an informed decision, which is something that our rollover commission is currently in the process of doing,” Kim wrote. She added that the rollover ideas to improve student spaces and add bike infrastructure would also have required facilities input.

“I would like to stress that the other two rollover ideas…may have had a similar if not more complicated set of difficulties,” she wrote.