Lake Villa Township adding ice rink to winter activities
The heat may be on, but Lake Villa Township Supervisor Dan Venturi is thinking about a new addition to the winter recreation landscape.
"It's a good day to be talking about ice skating, right?" Venturi said Tuesday as temperatures reached the upper 80s.
A few weeks after township voters thumped a proposal backed by Venturi to buy the Antioch Golf Club, he's moving on to a plan to install a donated 40-by-70-foot hockey rink at the winter play area in Caboose Park.
"It's not a golf course and we're not spending money," he said.
Complete with side boards, an electronic scoreboard and high-grade synthetic ice, the rink in November will join a sled hill and toboggan slide with snow-making capacity at Caboose Park.
Venturi said it will be installed near an old caboose used as a warming house. The surface there will need to be leveled, but repairs in that area already had been scheduled "so it won't be a big deal," he said.
The gift comes from Fremont Township resident Al Stensrud, once a distributor of the synthetic surface known as XTRAICE and involved in various ventures, including Skating in the Sky that ran a few years on the 94th Floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago.
Stensrud, who owns the East Dundee-based flooring company Couture Surfaces, bought the rink about 10 years ago as a home training ground for his son. His son has since moved on to competitive leagues and bigger facilities, leaving the rink in storage.
Rather than take a low purchase offer, Stensrud decided to give it away.
"I love to see it being used. You never know, a hockey player could be born from it," Stensrud said.
He first asked his neighbor, Fremont Township Supervisor Diana O'Kelly, whether the township would want it.
"We didn't have room for it," she said. "We've met our impervious surface ratio and our parks aren't open in the winter."
But O'Kelly knew of the sled hill in Lake Villa Township and called Venturi.
"I thought it would be a good accouterment," she said.
Ice rinks have been a touch-and-go endeavor for park districts and other agencies, given maintenance and warmer winters.
But the synthetic ice will allow the rink to be used continuously without depending on weather, Venturi said. Instead of a Zamboni, the surface is cleaned with a walk-behind floor scrubber, he said.
He said the cost will be "negligible" and the existing staff will be able to maintain the rink.
"It's a used rink but once they get it cleaned up and I give them some tips on maintaining it, they'll get years of use," Stensrud said.