Jax Artist Walk on Ice, the seasonal outdoor ice rink now open at the park beneath the Fuller Warren Bridge in Riverside, isn’t Jacksonville’s first outdoor ice skating rink.
Jacksonville’s Baby Boomers and Gen Xers will remember a similar outdoor ice skating rink in 1988 across the river on the city’s Southbank, near what is today’s Riverplace Tower. The 52-by-80-foot rink — the city’s first-ever outdoor skating rink — opened for 10 days beginning Dec. 21.
The rink’s ice was made using 14 miles of tubing that circulated a chilled anti-freeze liquid to freeze the water above the tubing, the Times-Union reported at the time.
Here’s more from our story on Dec. 17, 1998.
If you would like to share your photos from that December with us, you can do so using this link. We’ll share those on jacksonville.com.
Southbank to offer 10 days of outdoor skating
By Jessie-Lynne KerrStaff writer
For the first time ever, Jacksonville will have an outdoor ice skating rink.
While the temporary rink being installed on the Southbank by the Riverwalk isn’t quite like the ones in New York’s Central Park or Rockefeller Center, it will provide ice skaters with a place to perfect their axels or figure 8s for 10 days.
The portable ice rink, which measures 52 feet by 80 feet, will open at 10 a.m. Wednesday and will be a highlight of Jacksonville’s Mazda Gator Bowl Light Parade on New Year’s Eve at the Southbank Riverwalk.
Pat Craig, Riverwalk manager, said the public will be admitted free to the ice rink and those who don’t own ice skates may rent a pair for $2. The rink will be open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day except Dec. 31, when it will close at 5 p.m. Four professional ice shows will be staged on the ice rink that night beginning at 6 p.m.
She said parents of skaters 12 years old and younger are encouraged to bring their children to skate between 10 a.m. and noon.
Ms. Craig said bleachers for ice show spectators will be erected at the rink, on vacant land just east of the Gulf Life parking garage.
For years, indoor ice skating has been provided in Jacksonville at the Coliseum. Dan Lee, director of the city Recreation and Public Affairs Department, said ice skating in the Coliseum is held when no other events are scheduled, usually during the summer months.
The rink is being installed by International Ice Shows Inc. of Palos Heights, Ill. International’s president and general manager, Ron Urban, is in Jacksonville overseeing installation of the rink.
To erect the rink, Urban said, a one-inch layer of insulation material is topped by a plastic liner. On top of the liner are 14 miles of flexible tubing through which 300 gallons of an antifreeze liquid, ethylene glycol, will circulate.
Urban said the ethylene glycol is chilled in a portable refrigerating unit inside a trailer and then pumped through the miles of tubing. The cold ethylene glycol draws warmth from water that is on top of the tubing, thereby freezing it into ice.
Urban said he can maintain ice in the large outdoor rink even if the outside temperature climbs into the 70s. “If it is really warm and sunny and the ice surface gets watery, we may have to close the rink for an hour or two to chill it down,” Urban said.
Urban said he was able to keep a smaller ice rink in condition for four shows a day at the Texas State Fair in Dallas despite temperatures that ran up to the 90s.
The cost of the ice rink and the four professional ice skating shows is $35,000, and Ms. Craig said the cost is being borne by the sponsors of the Light Parade.
Theme of this year’s fifth annual parade is “Winterland on Parade.” It is the official kickoff of festivities for the 44th annual Gator Bowl game that will be played by the University of Georgia and Michigan State University at 8 p.m. on New Year’s Day.
The events begin at 6 p.m. with the Light Parade across the Main Street Bridge. In addition to the college bands from Georgia and Michigan State, there will be marching bands from 13 high schools in Illinois, West Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas.
The activity that gave its name to the event, a parade of lighted boats on the St. Johns River, will begin at 6:30 p.m.
Both universities will stage massive pep rallies capped with a $60,000 fireworks display at midnight to welcome in 1989.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Do you remember Jacksonville’s first-ever outdoor ice rink?
Reporting by Gary T. Mills, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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