Technical analysis gave way to emotional pleas Thursday as the Palm Beach Gardens City Council approved the site plan for a $40 million ice-rink complex at its oldest park.
To be built less than 2 miles from golf great Tiger Woods’ new high-tech, indoor golf arena, the complex with two full-size ice sheets is a draw for another legendary sports figure, hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, who plans to set up a branch of his hockey school there.
To neighbors who fought the project since April, when the City Council inked a 40-year lease of the 8-acre Plant Drive Park to the nonprofit Palm Beach North Athletic Foundation, the city made the case that there’s plenty of park space right next door.
To park enthusiasts thrown by the city’s willingness to demolish a 20-year-old concrete skateboard park, two council members, Bert Premuroso and Marcie Tinsley, offered hope, asking the city manager to consider options for rebuilding the skateboard park elsewhere.
The council voted 4-0, with Tinsley recusing herself over a conflict involving her husband’s job, to approve the site plan.
Instead of arguing that the proposal did not meet the technical criteria for a 123,000-square-foot center, neighbors resorted to impassioned appeals arguing that a busy ice rink didn’t belong in their neighborhood behind Palm Beach Gardens High School.
“The proposal feels like an imposition on our community,” said Helen Brown, who lives across the street. “I am deeply disappointed that the voices of those who live there seem to be overlooked — a feeling that we just don’t matter.”
Gardens native Rebecca McKeich said she rallied against the plan on behalf of her son.
“He found his family, his friend-family, at the Palm Beach Gardens skatepark,” she said, holding back tears. “Skateboarding was his love and that’s where he felt alive and home. And now you want to take it away?”
Combine it with fieldhouse
When the city Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board recommended approval in December, Mike Martino, a former city mayor, disputed the city’s interpretation of its own zoning code.
He didn’t bring back that argument before the council, instead detailing the park’s founding in 1968. A neighborhood park, he argued, is the wrong place for an ice rink of this size.
“There is a Solomon-like solution to all of this consternation and difficulty,” Martino said. “Relocate the development-ice rink to the Gardens District Park on Central Boulevard, where it was originally approved and where it belongs.”
Later, City Manager Ron Ferris explained that the city’s efforts to combine the ice rink with a fieldhouse at the Gardens North County District Park couldn’t work because tournaments and other events for the combined facilities would overlap, swamping available parking.
Before terminating that approach in 2022 over missed financial milestones, the city expected the ice rink’s revenues to cover the costs of the fieldhouse, which included multipurpose rooms for basketball, volleyball and other sports.
Instead, the city agreed to place the ice rink at Plant Drive Park and is paying $18 million for a stand-alone fieldhouse at the north county park.
‘Hockey has honestly saved my boys’
Ice rink supporters, too, drew from emotion to make the case for the rink, which will have 311 parking spaces and a 154-seat restaurant.
With four adopted children on the autism spectrum, Marine Corps veteran Zachariah Rowland of Greenacres said his family found sanctuary in youth hockey.
“For a good majority of their life they have been talked down, put down, picked on, including at the recreational facility,” he said. Two faced severe depression, he said, pausing to hold back tears.
“To the Breakers (youth hockey team) community, thank you. They gave my boys a home. They gave my boys a light and a spark back in their heart,” he said. “Hockey has honestly saved my boys. And that has put my family back together.”
The project also had the support of the Palm Beach County Sports Commission and two prominent city business groups, the North Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce and the PGA Corridor Association.
‘It must serve the greater community’
Looking more like the hockey coach that he is, rather than a billionaire, which he is also, the facility’s primary financial supporter, Larry Robbins, opened the meeting with conciliatory words toward neighbors.
“We understand that this facility must not just serve the narrow interests of a few people who love hockey or a few people who love figure skating,” he said. “It must serve the greater community.”
Robbins has pledged $10 million and the nonprofit’s leader, Mike Winter, said that brings total pledges to $12 million, enough to line up financing and begin construction by July 3, as required under the lease. Fees, discounted for Gardens residents, will pay off the construction debt and finance the center’s operations.
The lease calls for the city to get $75,000 annually in years two to five, $100,000 in years six through 12, $125,000 in years 13 to 18, $150,000 in years 19 to 30 and $200,000 beyond 30 years.
It would be the only ice rink in north county.
But it wouldn’t entirely eliminate nearby park space for the communities east of Military Trail, the city’s oldest neighborhoods dating to the 1960s, city planning manager Samantha Morrone said.
Across the street is the 15-acre Lilac Park, which features 24 pickleball courts, two playgrounds, a dog park and walking trails that connect to the city’s Burns Road Community Center and the City Hall complex of sports fields.
She pointed out that the city is working to rebuild the Amanda Buckley Field of Dreams Memorial softball field on school district property.
Costs compared to a movie outing
To questions from Mayor Chelsea Reed about how the foundation would work to serve even those who can’t afford hockey, Robbins, a hedge fund manager who has served as a hockey coach and minor league team owner, assured her the facility would offer free clinics and scholarships.
To those who told supporters they wouldn’t support an ice rink in their backyards, Robbins added that before moving last year to Palm Beach Gardens, he literally built an ice rink in his New Jersey backyard.
As to fears that open skating would cost too much, he assured the council that it would cost about as much as a trip to the movies — “except just much more active recreation than sitting and staring at the big screen.”
“We hear exactly the concerns of the community,” he said, “and the very valid concerns of this council.”
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.