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At least one major U.S. city is grappling with the consequences of climate change on public recreation.
In late October, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board recommended closing five outdoor ice rinks in its proposed 2025 budget — citing “uncertain climate fluctuations,” as well as warming-house rental costs and inflation. That number has since been reduced to four, with the rink at popular Windom Park spared for at least one more year.
If the closures are approved on Dec. 10, the number of outdoor rinks in Minneapolis will drop from 22 to 18. And that, locals say, would be a shame.
“For me, Windom is where it all began,” Joe Dziedzic, a former National Hockey League and University of Minnesota hockey player who grew up in northeast Minneapolis, told The Minnesota Star Tribune. “It’s where I learned to skate and learned to love the game. I realize the neighborhood has changed, but kids still need things to do to be active. Not having the neighborhood rink available for kids to play is a bad sign of the times.”
Another sign of the times: The newspaper reports that park and recreation staff “spent almost $890,000, or more than $110,000 per day, in labor and materials to try to keep the city’s outdoor ice rinks frozen and operable for a week at the end of January before the rinks turned to slush.” Last winter was the warmest in history for the Twin Cities, with an average temperature of 29.9 degrees, which broke a previous record set in 1877-78.
“Long periods of warm weather this winter made it difficult to build ice, and even if there were sustained below-freezing temperatures forecasted, the sun is too strong this late into winter to build significant new ice,” the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board said in a news release issued at the time.
“It was a total surprise to us,” Eric Vegoe, a volunteer coach for the Minneapolis Titans, told FOX 9 when this winter’s proposed rink closures were announced. “It’s difficult to see them make that choice just off of one year. … What will be the future of rinks? We don’t know.”
This kind of climate anxiety among winter sports participants cold become the norm.
In Milwaukee, Dretzka Park — Milwaukee County’s winter-only disc golf course — has become an endangered space. Officials there say temperatures must be below 36 degrees in order for the course to operate.
Ideally, there should be snow cover, as well. Without these conditions, they risk damaging the grounds,” Peter Bratt, director of operations and skilled trades for the Milwaukee County Parks Department, told AthleticBusiness.com.
Lack of snow puts other winter sports at risk in Milwaukee, too. “It’s a question we’re going to have to wrestle with moving forward,” Bratt said, adding that his department hasn’t been able to maintain community snowmobile and cross-country ski trails for the past three years, because there wasn’t enough snow. “We need to keep looking at other ideas, you know? How do we plan for warmer winters in a way that allows people to keep using our amenities?”
The upper Midwest isn’t the only region struggling to answer questions like that.
“In parts of Wyoming and Montana, for instance, the snowmobiling and cross-country skiing seasons are expected to shrink by 20% to 60% by the end of the century under one warming scenario, per Sarah Blount, the program director of research and evaluation at the National Environmental Education Foundation,” Axios.com reported earlier this year. “The ice at Colorado’s Evergreen Lake outside of Denver — which describes itself as the “world’s largest Zamboni-groomed outdoor ice rink” — wasn’t thick enough for skating until late December, and couldn’t support the Zamboni for another two weeks beyond that, manager Krista Emrich told Axios’ Emma Hurt.”
And last January’s Pond Hockey Classic in Syracuse, N.Y., was forced to move from Hiawatha Lake to a man-made rink downtown, also due to thin ice. Axios also cited the Loppet Foundation, in Minneapolis, a nonprofit that organizes outdoor activities for the public and had to abandon snowshoeing and tubing last winter.
“People are sad,” Claire Wilson, the foundation’s executive director, said. “They’re bereft, really, because it’s part of our culture. It’s how you get through the long winter, through the dark days.”
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