Dilworth Park's Ice Rink, Alongside City Hall, Will Open Nov. 14th
By Mike Dunn
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- On this warm and rainy afternoon, city officials today gathered west of City Hall for a very wintry announcement: they are planning to turn a portion of Dilworth Park into a skating rink next month.
Come mid-November, the new fountain at the newly renovated Dilworth Park will be converted into an ice skating rink for the public.
Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, which manages the park, says the first step, in two weeks, will be to drain the fountain. "Then we will begin to install the platform over the fountain and install the rink. We will be bringing in our chillers, our own special Dilworth Zamboni machine, a warming tent, a skate rental area. All of this will be operational on November 14th," he said.
The skating rink will be open seven days a week, including holidays, until February 22nd.
Levy says the facility will accommodate several hundred skaters at a time.
"The rink will be sixty feet wide, basically the width of the fountain, and extend 120 feet down. Just for comparison, that's roughly the same size as the rink that's at Rockefeller Center in New York City," he said.
Sponsoring the rink will be the Rothman Institute, an orthopedic care center that might very well benefit from the spills, bumps, and bruises suffered by skaters.
More information, including admission fees and skate rental prices, is at dilworthpark.org.