Ice Skaters Feeling Left Out in the Cold

The sun had barely begun to peek from behind the Verdugo Hills one morning last week and the temperature outside was in the 90s as 10-year-old Lina Chmiel carefully tightened the laces of her ice skates. She already had spent 45 minutes tracing figure-eights at Burbank’s Pickwick Ice Arena and another four hours of practice lay ahead.

It was just another day on the ice for Lina, who has been skating since she was 3. Like countless girls before her, Lina dreams of becoming an Olympic figure skater, and 5:15 a.m. practice sessions are a part of her routine.

“My mom just took me out for fun,” she said, remembering her first time on the ice. “After a few days, I decided this would be my hobby. When I knew what the Olympics were, I wanted to go.”

As she spoke, about 30 other skaters, ranging in age from 6 to about 14, filed purposefully onto the ice where music from “The Phantom of the Opera” drifted from the sound system.

For nearly 30 years, Pickwick Ice Arena has served as a training center for Olympic skaters, nurturing childhood dreams into reality for competitors such as Tiffany Chin, Linda Fratianne and Christopher Bowman. The rink is home to one of the most successful competitive skating clubs in the country and is a popular practice arena for many local hockey clubs.

That is scheduled to end Sept. 30. Despite doing excellent business, the rink’s owners announced last week that they will close the 29-year-old arena because of major repair bills and rising liability insurance costs. The closure will leave 15 independent instructors and more than 2,000 regular patrons in search of a new facility.

That is no easy task, considering Pickwick is one the few Olympic-size rinks in Los Angeles. In addition, many smaller rinks, built in the 1950s and 1960s, have closed in the past five years, including those in Santa Monica, Tarzana and Topanga Plaza. There is also talk of closing rinks in North Hollywood and Thousand Oaks.

Since the announcement of the impending closure last Monday, skating enthusiasts have rallied to attempt to halt--or at least delay--the demise of the landmark facility, which they say is more than just a place to skate.

“It’s like a form of home,” said Chin, who finished fourth in the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, and who is a student in Los Angeles. The same sentiment was expressed by dozens of skaters, many of whom spend hours practicing at the rink.

“It’s not just closing a rink,” skating instructor Russell Sessions said. “It’s changing a lot of hopes and dreams . . . . Without Pickwick, I can see the end of competitive skating in the Valley.”

When the rink opened in 1961 it was a place where families and children came to glide casually across the ice. It now caters mostly to skaters in training and private clubs. The Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, whose members have included a number of Olympic competitors, has been based at the rink since it opened.

During those 30 years, the rink became a legend of sorts among avid skaters. Many said it is not unusual for skaters to come from around the country to train at the rink. Some serious skaters have relocated to be near the arena, which once served as a practice facility for the Los Angeles Kings hockey team. Movie star-figure skater Sonja Henie skated at the rink three mornings each week until her death in 1969. Her white skates sit, unlabeled, on a shelf in the manager’s office.

“She was always a lady,” said rink manager Cary Adams, who began working at Pickwick 25 years ago as a 16-year-old high school junior. He joked that this is the “high school job I never left.”

The son of a hockey player and a figure skater, Adams spent much of his youth around ice rinks and was at Pickwick the night it opened. “The place was mobbed,” he said. “It was impressive.”

The memories of the rink are sweeter for some than for others.

“I got over 30 stitches in this rink,” said Frank Dunnigan, 23, of La Canada Flintridge, recounting his years as a hockey referee and player at Pickwick. “Also a broken rib and a broken nose.”

Even so, Dunnigan turned up at a rally outside the rink last Thursday to protest the planned closure. About 150 figure skaters, hockey players and coaches chanted “Don’t close our rink” and carried signs tacked to hockey sticks as they marched. Many of the protesters were children.

“The kids are really going to suffer,” said John Halebian, who moved to Burbank so he could be near the rink where he plays hockey twice a week. “We’re losing another youth-oriented activity.”

Organizers scheduled a meeting for tonight to discuss strategy. So far, the protests have not changed the plans of the rink’s owners.

The business of skating has changed since owners Walter and Edward Stavert opened Pickwick. In those days, 800 to 900 skaters would glide across the ice during public skating sessions. Since then, attendance gradually has dwindled, despite brief upswings during Olympic years.

“Today, we’re lucky if we have 200,” Pickwick general manager Frank Silvio said.

Silvio said that nearly 70% of the rink’s business comes from renting ice time to hockey teams and figure skaters, and Adams said it is not uncommon for the rink to stay open until 1:30 a.m. on weekends to accommodate hockey games.

Adams said the rink’s revenues have never been better.

But faced with $500,000 in needed renovations to the deteriorating facility and rising liability insurance costs, the Staverts decided in January to close the rink, Silvio said.

“The cost is prohibitive,” he said, adding that the Staverts are interested in finding a new use for the property. He said no plans had been made for the land.

“I hate to see it leave,” Adams said. “But things change whether we like it or not.”