Tacoma needs a skating rink — and a local group wants to build one. They deserve help | Opinion

A lot of people have skating rink memories. Chris Cooley is no exception.

For some, it’s elementary school skate nights, and maybe the first time they held sweaty hands with a flame. For others, it’s hours spent after school and on weekends, trying to harness an inner Apollo Ohno, striving for individual or team speed skating greatness.

For Cooley, a 47-year-old program manager at Microsoft who has lived in Tacoma for three decades, the recollections are less specific but just as nostalgic.

Cooley describes herself as a “rink rat” growing up. She didn’t skate competitively. She just spent much of her childhood on eight wheels, eating concessions and hanging with friends.

The experience was foundational, she explained. In addition to her job in tech, Cooley is now a certified skate instructor and the founder of the local Tomorrowland Junior Roller Derby team.

Recently, Cooley — who also serves as Tomorrowland Junior’s president and coach — added a new memory to her collection.

She recalls a time when the Tacoma area actually had a skating rink.

Remember?

As The News Tribune’s Becca Most reported, Skateworld at 2101 Mildred St. W., on the Tacoma-Fircrest border, closed for good on March 31 after the property’s owner decided not to renew Skateworld’s lease.

The business was profitable, Skateworld’s management told the TNT. The decision wasn’t about that.

Recent permit applications filed with Pierce County Planning and Public Works suggest the building will soon be home to a massive indoor golf training facility. A Redmond-based company appears to have upscale plans at the property.

Cooley, meanwhile, has been busy trying to find a way to fill what she describes as an urgent void. The closest rink is in Federal Way now. There’s another in Olympia, but, for the most part, kids in Tacoma and Pierce County have been left with nothing.

She started by cold-calling any facility or organization with potential gym space to spare, looking for a place for Tomorrowland Junior to practice.

When that didn’t work, Cooley set her sights higher.

In March, Tomorrowland launched a fundraising campaign intended for the eventual construction of a new local skating rink. To date, roughly $25,000 has come in, some of it in the form of small donations likely inspired by roadside signs planted throughout Tacoma’s Westgate neighborhood.

As a roller derby coach, Cooley has seen the difference the increasingly popular sport can make in the lives of young people, she said.

As a former rink rat, she knows everyone needs a place they can feel safe and welcome.

“There’s such a need for this space, especially for these kids who don’t fit into a normal sports mold. … They feel like outcasts. Sometimes, it’s about gender identity. Skating provides acceptance and a sense of community,” Cooley said.

“I’ve had parents come to me and tell me that we’ve saved their kid’s life. … They found roller derby and found a home,” she added.

“Roller skating is one of those things that with a little bit of grit and determination, anybody can do it.”

Pop-up skating rinks and gym space

Solving this problem will require grit and determination, Cooley has learned.

Even before the closure of Skateworld, local rink time was at a premium for local roller derby clubs.

In late 2023, Tacoma’s Dockyard Roller Derby celebrated its return to competition at Pierce College in Lakewood, but the team held weekly practices at Skateworld prior to its closure.

Tomorrowland Junior has used space provided by the Boys and Girls Club, Cooley told The News Tribune, but recently that deal fell apart, too.

With Skateworld shuttered, the situation is dire, she said.

Even if Tomorrowland Junior’s fundraising effort feels like a long shot, you get the sense she’s serious.

Most of all, you walk away feeling like it shouldn’t be this hard — particularly in a city known for thinking big, rolling up its sleeves and being creative, whether it’s providing otherwise empty office space to aspiring artists or building youth violence prevention programs on the fly.

“We’ve contacted every gymnasium, every school district, every church, every private school, every place we can think of that could potentially have a basement or an open space for us to skate in. And we have been turned down at every corner,” Cooley said.

“We’re at a place now where if we want someplace to skate, it feels like we’re going to have to build it ourselves,” she added, noting that the campaign remains “100% open to all solutions.”

What might that look like, at least in the short term?

Possibilities abound.

In Portland, a DIY effort launched in an empty parking garage quickly grew into what’s now known as Secret Roller Disco. Now in its fourth year, organizers transform the blacktop at a local elementary school into a family-friendly skate party every Thursday night.

In cities like New York, Baltimore, Atlanta and Los Angeles “pop-up” roller skating rinks have been a hit.

In Tacoma, elected leaders and local park districts might not be lining up to champion the immediate construction of a new rink, but there’s no reason the city can’t find a place for a few roller derby teams to practice.

Nothing is stopping the city from creating a few opportunities for kids and families to make some memories of their own.

If it sounds far-fetched, consider this:

The need for such outside-the-box thinking in local parks and recreation has already been well documented.

Healthy kids and families

Late last year, local parks leaders — including executives at Metro Parks Tacoma — acknowledged one of the biggest challenges they’re facing.

Youth across Pierce County are less active than their peers across the state and nation, a blistering report authored by the nonprofit Aspen Institute found.

Distributed to media outlests and park districts across the country, the report found that only 19% of Pierce County youth engage in 60 minutes of physical activity a day, the minimum standard recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while a quarter of youth who reported having zero days of physical activity said they regularly feel depressed or hopeless.

In response to the sobering findings, a plain-as-day solution was touted: give the kids what they actually want.

Researchers straight-up asked Pierce County youth what was missing, which was a good start.

The answer? It wasn’t more football, basketball and baseball. It was new things, different things and more inclusive options.

It was a call to re-imagine local parks, recreation facilities and programming, according to Metro Parks Tacoma executive director Shon Sylvia and Roxanne Miles, who oversees Pierce County Parks and Recreation.

In short, there’s a critical need for exactly what Skateworld once provided.

Cooley knows it, and so do the young roller derby players she’s fighting for.

So do a lot of Tacoma families.

Now, all they need is a little help.

“The feedback from the community has been overwhelmingly positive. People want to support what we’re trying to do,” Cooley said.

“We just need companies to lean in and help us get there. We need an agency like Metro Parks to lean in and help us get there,” she added.

“That’s what we’re missing — the recognition of importance from the places that really matter.”