Skaters savor last laps before rink closes

The Skate Zone ice and roller rink went through 15 years of ice and roller hockey, figure skating, broomball and freestyle hours — 10 years under current owner Rod Gunn — but it couldn’t survive the forces of economics. That’s why the only ice rink in Huntington Beach closed down for good on Saturday.

The Skate Zone ice and roller rink was quiet on a weekday afternoon before it closed, with just a few kids and enthusiasts getting some peaceful practice time before the after-school crowd rushed in. But those making a visit weren’t just regulars; all were trying to get in at least one more time on skates before the community institution shuttered permanently.

The labor of love was a chronic money drain and has only gotten worse, Gunn said.

“If I told you the sum we put into that personally … “ he said, trailing off. “I think we made money one year, and that was not a lot.”

Gunn said he and his wife Penny tried to run the rink as a part of the community, not just a business.

He was president of the Cal Selects girls’ ice hockey club, which his daughter Chanda Gunn played on years before winning an Olympic bronze medal with the U.S. women’s hockey team in 2006.

They invited in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they hosted after-school programs, and they had what he calls “a great community-based figure-skating program.”

“It was a family rink,” he said. “We ran it as a family, as a place where families could come and be safe and enjoy themselves. We had a lot of involvement from community groups.”

Those groups are scattering now. The Cal Selects are moving to a rink in Artesia. Registrar Linda Anderson, who has worked at the rink since the Gunn family took over, said she and most of the figure skating staff are moving to the Westminster Ice Arena.

“It’s going to be sad to see it all go,” Anderson said last week. “I got so close to the boys and girls and their families. It was like another family.”

Garden Grove resident Bill Cole, who has skated since he was a teenager, glided alone around the roller rink on old-fashioned skates last Wednesday afternoon. He said he had been coming there a couple times a week for exercise.

Cole said he has no choice but to find somewhere else — maybe a rink in Fountain Valley — but other places aren’t as tolerant of a speed skater like him.

“Maybe I’ll have to show up right when they open in the morning,” he said.

Supporters of the rink held a demonstration and party Saturday at the rink to protest the shutdown, though Gunn has said it’s not feasible for anyone to take over the facilities he has leased for 10 years.

“It isn’t economically viable for someone else to come in,” he said. “The main problem is it’s an ice rink and a roller rink, and roller hockey is in very serious decline. You also can’t put $2.5 million into converting to an ice rink when you don’t own the building.”