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The news technically broke two weeks ago when, buried in a Frontburner post about the Stars’ home opener, team officials mentioned that they might put an ice rink at Klyde Warren Park.
But it wasn’t until yesterday that the Dallas Business Journal asked the obvious followup: Are you guys serious?
In a word, yes.
The rink, according to DBJ, would be 5,000 square feet and “sized for children,” and would be funded by former Stars owner Norm Green. Jody Grant, who chairs the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, told the DBJ the ice rink was an “exciting prospect” but that it is nonetheless too early to say if it will actually happen.
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To get around the inconvenient fact that this is Texas, where outdoor temperatures have been known to hover in the 70s despite the decidedly wintry tilt of the earth’s axis, the plans are for some type of synthetic material.
Frontburner reports that the material will likely be Super-Glide, which sounds like it’s not something children should be playing with. It will probably be located on the Great Lawn, where it might possibly leave a mark. And there will be ice skate rentals.
The question now is why. Klyde Warren’s PR folks have cobbled together a press conference for 1:30 this afternoon, where Grant and Green will presumably provide an answer. Or maybe they’ll pose a question of their own: Why the hell not?
Update at 3:07 p.m.: Our new guy, Luke Darby, went to the presser and came back with a small handful of additional detail:
According to Grant, the 50’x100′ synthetic-ice rink, funded by Green and his wife, would serve to keep park attendance up in winter months. The planned location is in front of the children’s park. Food trucks would migrate to different ends of the park to control crowd distribution, and in off months the rink comes apart and squares of chemical ice are stacked somewhere.
