What is the nearest outdoor skating rink? Harbourfront is closed this year for renovations, as I understand it. This does seem like a bit of a missed opportunity.
 
UrbanAffair said:
What is the nearest outdoor skating rink? Harbourfront is closed this year for renovations, as I understand it. This does seem like a bit of a missed opportunity.
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The very nice rink at Sherbourne Common is probably the closest. It is worth remembering that when Love Park was planned (and almost completed) there was no discussion of the rink @ Harbourfront being closed. If the closure had been known, I suspect that more efforts might have been made to add skating to Love Park but it WOULD have changed the design. - which I love.
 
smably said:
"Natural winter ice" was listed as an element of the design approach though:

It seems pretty likely that Cormier had originally hoped to include ice as a winter element, but whether due to logistics of refrigeration or value engineering it was eliminated from the design. So be it.
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Natural winter ice isn't a skating rink however. It's allowing whatever water is left to freeze or not freeze as nature intended.
 
mrgrieves said:
The design called for water to remain year round and for the entire bottom to be filled with the stones. I think the latter has been discussed here already.

One of the earlier materials suggested the natural ice could be used for skating (of course this is aspirational as even natural ice requires a lot of maintenance for skating).

Year round water with stone bottom vs an empty pond with concrete floor for half the year is a pretty big difference! Considering the incredible level of detail that goes into designing this thing, it's like building a palace but the front door is from home depot and the front lawn is dirt.

A huge consideration for the designers is how the park will be used. How will people use the empty concrete pond? graffiti, skateboarding. a truly interesting experiment

the attached are from Waterfront TO.


View attachment 520694View attachment 520695
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I think it's pretty clear they pulled back on the year round water plan. The entire summer and fall that the park has been open, the water level observed in the pond was the "winter" level, never approaching the higher summer line that's meant to go right up to the red tiling. This is pretty clear in all the photos posted here and elsewhere. It's a shame too, was looking forward to seeing it freeze over naturally.
 
I always thought this pond idea was not practical but got attacked and called strange for a differing opinion
It's costlier to maintain an artificial pond park compared to a natural one, when the city is underfunded and has no budget
So I guess plans have changed and no year-round pond?
 
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There was a (very small) skating rink in front of Union last winter.

I agree that not having a rink here is a miss, I wonder what the cost difference would have been.
 
FastidiousHack said:
There was a (very small) skating rink in front of Union last winter.

I agree that not having a rink here is a miss, I wonder what the cost difference would have been.
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The chillers themselves can be upwards of $60k or more for a small one.

NPS cost 2 million to replace the compressors beneath the ice rink.
 
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Budget. Lots of cool stuff got value engineered out. Still a fine park though.
 
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