I'm quite pleasantly suprised with the rink. The concept was strange enough that I was all ready to hate it. You can imagine my surprise at how much we loved it. We've only been down once with the boys, but it was fabulous. I guess you get some good ice when you lay out the bucks for it, don't you?

Speaking as a taxpayer, I hope the Powers that Be can come up with a revenue stream to pay for its maintenance. I'd rather pay for the staples: roads, sewers, police & fire. The City went bankrupt once over a frill, let's hope we don't do it again.

Gordo,

You thought the concept of an outdoor down-town rink odd? And what's more a 'frill'? I thought that it was a no-brainer and a long-time comming.

Perhaps I am too accustomed to my child-hood excursions to the rinks at Nathan-Phillips Square and Queens Quay in Toronto, but it seems to me that every city in Canada should have free, outdoor downtown rinks.

Do other cities not have such facilities? My only other expeirence is with Montreal and Ottawa which of course have the natural ice of Lac Castor and the Rideau Canal respectively.

Is the cost really that prohibitive? If so, where is our nationlly funded ice-rink program? Surelly this must be Canada's next great social program opportunity. Free downtonw outdoor skating for all, along with our health care and pensions!

Growing up in Kingston, almost every neighbourhood park in the city had rinks. The boards went up in Novermber and came down in April. The vast majority of these have disappeared over the years. I only know of one that's still maintained and they have a zamboni for that. Apparently, it's no longer acceptable to shovel off the ice before you use it.

I'd really rather the $100k+ per year operating costs of the City Hall rink were put towards more neighbourhood facilities. Be they arenas for minor hockey or boards for outdoor rinks.

Downtown seems to be the only part of the city that's important to the Powers any more. It's not just the current administration, it's been that way for a decade or more. It sad, really. That much-vaunted sense of community is slowly slipping away.

Your rink looks really nice! And it's free? Get out! I don't think we don't have any free skating down here in Rochester any more. When I was a kid in the 70s, they used to flood the town's tennis courts in the suburb we lived in. No zamboni, lots of ruts and bumps. But it was free and it got us out of the house.

Are they selling stuff near the rink? Looks like jars of jam or even - dare I say it - Marmite. You guys have a farmers' market behind City Hall in the summer, right? Is it going on in some reduced format now?

When I was a lad in NS in the 70s we skated on ponds and smoothed the ice over the course of a day's play.<p>The rink is built so in spring, it is the surface of the farmer's market and in winter the rink. I think the plan is to have it actually larger.