Pasadena ice rink plan killed by Council

typical pasadena nothing positive for the youth of our area.

Another slap in the face for the kids in the city. Where was Gordo or Waldo?

Build a ton of apartments - but they can't commit to creating an ice rink for the citizens. Let's vote these people out!

I'm all for kids having a place to ice skate, play basketball, soccer, tennis, and football. If something keeps them off the street, great. What I am not for is the use of tax dollars to subsidize a facility that should be privately owned and operated. If there's money to be made, an ice rink would be built. If not, the kids can do something else with their free time in parks that are funded with our tax dollars.

The city didn't want to spend $20M for a new rink ... I get it .. that's a lot of money. All we kept hearing is that the rink should be privately-owned and operated.

So .... someone comes along and says "we'll give you $10M, plus the management and construction oversight and all the city has to do is: 1) put up $1M in general plan funds. 2) Cover $8M in stimulus debt that will GET PAID BACK TO THEM in about 5 years." Ends up being privately owned, privately operated ... just what they wanted.

However, the city says "No, no -- we don't want to spend $1M on a new rink, but we'll spend $1M on the old one."

How does that make any sense? The primary burden is off of the city, and they still don't want to do it.

Shameful and not smart -- not smart from a business perspective, not smart from a recreational perspective, not smart from the future of our children and growth of our city.

An afterthought ... the planned ice rink is one of the VERY FEW (if only) recreational facility that is actually forecasted to make a profit. Oh wait -- the city didn't WANT to make $12 million in profit ...

Good. East Pasadena doesn't need a new ice rink. Invest that 18 million on the NW area instead.

No mention of the 9 years of planning or $3.5 million that was already spent and is now wasted? Or the fact that the city wasted a ton of contractors time and money to bid the job multiple times? This article was far too polite on the four council members who voted against it.

Fix up the old one! Why spend so much money to remake something that just needs a little TLC.

I live in east part of town and have a teenager. Why would I send him to the west when all of the gang violence is increasing. I am so disgusted with the choices to not build the ice rink. We need more to do in this area.

Laterz wrote:

Good. East Pasadena doesn't need a new ice rink. Invest that 18 million on the NW area instead.

Why? So typical NW residents can turn what ever would be biult into another run down buisness? NW residents are ghetto, and would destroy any new facility bulit there. Why waste money on that area? They can't respect anything in their area, what makes you think spending $18 million, would change anything? It would look the same after a few years....

This just unthinkable. Build the darn rink and let's do something positive on the East end of town!

The old rink is inadequate in many many ways-- not enough ice size for everyone and all of the different types of skaters. A new rink would double the business of the existing rink by bringing back in serious skaters from the rinks they have to skate at now in order to compete.

The facility is an old ball room ... it is not meant to be a refrigerator. A "little TLC" does not begin to describe what would be needed to give the existing rink a face lift. Pasadena should be embarassed that they haven't done anything to bring it to a decent standard already.

And yes, 10 years of planning and $3.5M spent on something the city had already made their mind up about, but dragged their feet, changed council members in the meantime, and conveniently found themnselves in the middle of a recession providing a good reason to say "no", even when someone offer to pay for more than half of it. Seriously, we are talking about $1M for the city to cough up ... there is even a foundation that has been formed that would have helped to raise money to contribute to that amount. They knew that, and still said no.

There are several councilmembers' leadership abilities and vision for the future that should be seriously questioned.

Their vision seems to be pack people in as tight as possible and don't worry about what is important as far as quality oflife.

Why?
Because East Pasadena is were the rich folk are.

What, so the city is going to reward the areas that already have everything?

If anything, use that money for some outreach in the areas that need them.

East Pasadena has plenty.

Laterz wrote:

Why?
Because East Pasadena is were the rich folk are.
What, so the city is going to reward the areas that already have everything?
If anything, use that money for some outreach in the areas that need them.
East Pasadena has plenty.

Such as?

Well, we all knew the city would not come through! Sure, go ahead and build all those useless buildings around the ice rink and all those apartments that no one can really afford to live in. Nice job, city folks! Take a good look at all those cities that have ice rinks for the kids to play hockey and skaters to figure skate.....what a gem they have! Not Pasadena - you should all be embarrased at how shabby the rink is! Thanks for absolutely nothing!!

The message below is being forwarded by request of Councilmember Steve Madison (District 6, City of Pasadena) regarding the outcome of Monday night's City Council vote against the building of a new ice skating rink in Pasadena. You may reply to Mr. Madison with any comments or feedback at smadison@cityofpasadena.net
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**Begin forwarded message:
From: Steve Madison (smadison@cityofpasadena.net)
Date: September 15, 2009 9:43:43 PM PDT
Subject: RE: UPDATED! Pasadena "Build The Rink" (Your Support is Still Needed by July 31)
Last night the Pasadena City Council ended our dream of building a new ice rink in Pasadena. Although Mayor Bogaard, Steve Haderlein, Jacque Robinson and I voted to continue negotiations to build the new rink, we needed 5 votes and Chris Holden, Margaret McAustin and Terry Tornek strongly opposed building a new rink in Pasadena and insisted on killing the project last night. Victor Gordo, who has been supportive of the rink and might have been the necessary 5th vote to continue to work on ways to build the rink, was unable to attend the meeting last night because of work commitments. At one point I made a motion to table (postpone) the matter until Victor was back. But that motion failed by the same vote—led by Chris Holden, the three opponents realized that the rink project might still be alive if we put the matter it over until we had all 8 councilmembers present, so they opposed my request for a postponement of one week! Again, we needed 5 votes to postpone and we only had 4.
This decision essentially ends 8-10 years of work for many of us; years in which we spent $3 million of taxpayer money on the new rink, set aside another $2.5 million to be used to build it, acquired and readied a site in East Pasadena supported by the Councilmember from that district (Steve Haderlein), retained architects and developed plans for a new state-of-the-art double sheet rink that under the most conservative estimates would be a moneymaker for Pasadena (without even considering the indirect economic benefits of hotel stays, restaurant business, sales tax, etc.), and negotiated extensively with Luc Robataille and others for a management agreement that would have included the support of the LA Kings for the new rink.
I have asked for a detailed investigation into why the project took so long to come to Council such that we lost our momentum and ultimately the project itself, wasting a decade of time, energy and literally millions of your tax dollars. At the end of the discussion, a majority voted to explore renovating the current civic auditorium single sheet rink, so that the three councilmembers’ votes do not end ice skating in Pasadena. But the reality is that is likely what they accomplished--with parking now $9 at the convention center, a dilapidated rink that is too small to begin with, crammed into an old ballroom, and a lease that expires in September 2011, this may well be the end of figure skating and ice hockey in Pasadena.
I look forward to hearing from you as we go forward about what if anything you believe we should do at this point. Please pass this message along to anyone interested in skating in Pasadena, and let them know I would love to hear their thoughts about where to go from this point. Thanks for your support, and I am so sorry we were not successful.
**End forwarded message.
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how does Steve Madison feel about local hiring? E. Pasadena has enough resources that million can be spent helping youth get jobs..

If ice rinks are profitable ventures, then the private sector will step in and make a bundle. We are not out of this "recession" yet so we cannot keep spending as if we are. As a Pasadena resident who is already taxed a bundle, paying higher water rates and hearing about a parcel tax for schools, I just cannot afford more of these non essential ventures that benefit the region more than provide some relief to residents.