Sharpen your skates and pray for cold weather: the town's new ice rink was installed at Stotzky Park today.
"I'm very excited," Riverhead recreation superintendent Ray Coyne said as he helped workers assemble the prefabricated portable rink inside the existing roller rink.
The rink will be flooded tomorrow. It will take 15,000 gallons of water to fill up the 65 by 100-foot rink, Coyne said. Made of PVC pipes and a plastic liner, the rink will have a three- or four-inch thick layer of ice.
The Riverhead Fire Department is going to assist with the fill-up, Coyne said.
The recreation chief said he's looking into buying skates for rental purposes because residents have been asking about skate rentals. He's also learned about a piece of equipment, available for about $4,000 that will help the town avoid being at the mercy of Mother Nature. It can keep the rink frozen even when the air temperature is in the 60s, Coyne said.
"This year will be sort of a learning phase for us," he said. Use of the rink will most likely be free of charge this season.
A representative from the Rinks in Hauppauge, the company that runs the skating rink in Port Jefferson, is coming out to look at the new rink next week. The town may be able to lease the rink to a private entity for operation, Coyne said, if that's cost effective.
Councilman George Gabrielsen, who came up with the idea, said he thinks the rink will be a "great thing for the town." The cost was paid out of Riverhead's recreation fund, which is made up entirely of fees paid by developers on a per-lot or per-unit basis, so "it's not coming out of the taxpayer's pocket."
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl
