The whole world was captivated by the courage, talent, and determination of the athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. All across New York City, fans cheered when the Americans won the gold in both the women’s and men’s hockey. Thousands of New Yorkers, children and adults, are strapping on their skates and heading to their local rinks.
Manhattan has six ice rinks. Brooklyn has two; Queens still has one in the World’s Fairgrounds; and tiny Staten Island has two. These facilities are municipally owned and provide skate rentals, lessons, and bathrooms.
Only the Bronx is without a rink. In 2009, just before the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, I set out to change that.
As the new director of the 161st Street BID, I wrote to the Bronx parks commissioner asking why the 1.5 million residents of the Bronx didn’t have a public rink like the other boroughs. He let me know quite quickly that there was no money to staff a rink, even for a month.
I felt that the commissioner and the city were making excuses for this gross inequity, the lack of a skating rink in New York’s poorest borough, so I contacted the Daily News. The paper wrote an article under the headline “Skating Plan Iced.” The first sentence read, “City officials are on thin ice with Cary Goodman.” It explained the Parks Department’s objections to staffing and siting the rink. Meanwhile, if the city would not provide a rink, we would (made from artificial ice) and demonstrate the intense interest for skating in the Bronx.
As soon as The News article was published, the Parks Department agreed to provide staffing for skating lessons and free skates. Next, we applied for membership to the U.S. Figure Skating Association, which was promoting the Vancouver Olympics. We were designated as an official Olympic chapter. We received thousands of pamphlets, posters, and stickers for children. And the association promised to send an Olympian to cut the ribbon at our rink’s inauguration. Only one problem remained: where to place a 60’ x 40’ artificial ice rink in time for the Olympic Games, which were set to begin on Feb. 12.
The Mid-Bronx Senior Citizen Center came to the rescue by letting us build the rink in its courtyard. The artificial ice would be surrounded by bales of hay to provide a safety barrier for skaters.
Though the rink was small and could not accommodate hockey games or competitive skaters, it could serve as a beginner’s rink for elementary and preschool students. Two thousand of them took their first steps in skates.
One journalist, observing a class of first graders putting on skates for the first time, wrote:
“Each session ends with a simple lesson familiar to anyone who ever lived in this neighborhood. They’re taught how to fall. Most importantly, they learn how to get back up.”
On Jan. 19, 2011, 10 months after our model artificial rink, Mayor Mike Bloomberg gave his State of the City address and included money for an ice rink in Van Cortlandt Park.
It took another 18 months before a Van Cortlandt rink opened. The mayor had kept his promise, and the Bronx was elated.
Unfortunately, after two short seasons, the concessionaire ran into fiscal problems and closed the rink.
Four Olympic cycles later, the Bronx is still without a place for its residents to feel the thrill of skating.
Maybe our new mayor will lace up and score a goal for the borough, a permanent, municipal rink.
We’ll be cheering for him if he does.
Goodman, the founding executive director of the 161st Street BID, has written a book on NYC, “Dreaming & Scheming,” from which this is adapted.
