November 9, 2017 at 9:53 a.m.
Minocqua's ice skating rink to stay put
Ice Cold Beerfest request leads to extensive discussion
Minocqua's ice skating rink to stay put
Town chairman Mark Hartzheim said Wednesday the work will continue as far as leveling the area off - something he agreed with public works director Mark Pertile was something it needs - and then seeded.
What won't be happening is the re-location of the town's ice rink, from the Torpy Park parking lot during winter months to the grassy area directly to the north between the parking lot and beach area.
Hartzheim said at some point in the next few years, the town could change how it does the ice rink to help it freeze sooner, perhaps by using a liner for it. But for now, it will stay where it is and that was expressed as the result of what became a lengthy discussion at Tuesday's town board meeting.
The discussion for a time veered from the agenda item, the town board's consideration of a picnic license for the 20th Ice Cold Beerfest, scheduled for February 2018.
A good problem
Doug Etten, a representative for the Beerfest, was at the meeting.
"How many times have you done this now?" supervisor John Thompson asked.
"Twenty," Etten said.
"Twenty?" Thompson asked. "Motion to approve. It's the same thing every year."
"Is it?" Hartzheim asked Etten.
"I think I'm always putting you guys on the spot and taking advantage of your generosity," Etten said. "There are some things I'd like to talk about to see if I we can move forward with plans for this year or continue what we've been doing in the past."
He said the event in its 19 years has raised close to $80,000 for Dr. Kate Hospice.
"For the last two years now, we've been able to help the cancer center at Marshfield Clinic as well along with donations from the Lakeland ATV Club," Etten said.
The festival itself, he said, has moved a few times since it began at the Minocqua Brewery.
From there, it went to The Waters, the Campanile Center, a downtown Minocqua public parking lot and the vacant lot next to the Best Western.
"The last two years, we've been in upper Torpy (Park) between the trees and the pavillion there," Etten said. "This year, we're kind of approached with a unique problem, which is a good problem. We put up for sale 500 tickets which typically, in the past, we've always done 600, general admission."
He said all those 500 tickets for the 2018 Ice Cold Beerfest sold out in less than 48 hours.
"So, we're looking for another area where we might be able to accommodate a few more people," Etten said. "I was kind of talking to Mark Pertile and I know I talked to the town board a couple of years ago about moving the festival down into lower Torpy."
He said where the festival has been held the past two years, it's "penned in on both sides with, of course, (U.S.) Hwy. 51 to the south and the lake to the north."
"So, the tent we have is the biggest tent we can get and capacity last year was full," Etten said. "If we continue in that spot, we're set with that amount every year which, if that's what we're able to do, that's what we're able to do. Obviously, if we're able to move it to a larger location where we're able to accommodate more people, we're able to raise more money and I guess everyone continues to go their grand old way. I wanted to take some time to hear your opinions and whether or not it's even a thought process to try and move it."
He said if the festival were to be moved, he'd like to keep it downtown.
"That's where everybody enjoys it, that's where everybody likes it and that's where everybody benefits from it," Etten said. "Anytime you move it away from the hotels, of course, you have a problem with drinking and driving. We want to try and stay as safe as possible but ... that's the big thing, I guess, I'd like to ask tonight is if it's possible to move it into lower Torpy. I know we've asked before and the consensus was we didn't want to do anything with the ice skating rink."
He said he didn't know what had been decided regarding the ice skating rink.
"If it's going to move, if it's going to stay there," Etten said. "Mark and I did talk and if it was going to move, we would be willing, as the Ice Cold Beer Festival, to help with the cost if there was any involved in moving it. If it would help us out this year and then going into the future, being able to put it in the main parking lot in lower Torpy."
He said if that was something that could be done, it would allow for the sale of up to 250 more tickets for the event.
A decision not made
The last part of Etten's presentation changed Thompson's tune.
"For that I'll say the same thing I said the last time," he said. "That's just way too popular with people. The ice skating rink. I don't know how you could justify it."
Supervisor Susan Heil looked at Pertile.
"Were you thinking of moving it?" she asked him.
"We started moving it," Pertile said.
"You started moving it?" Heil asked.
"To where?" supervisor Billy Fried asked.
"Still at Torpy," Pertile said.
"You're not moving it," Hartzheim told Pertile.
"On the top?" Fried asked.
"It's on the bottom," Pertile said. "On the grass area."
Hartzheim looked - and sounded - perturbed.
"No, it's not," he said. "I never made that decision. I told you I didn't want it there."
"On the grass area?" Pertile asked.
"Yeah," Hartzheim said. "You don't make those decisions without going through the board or at least the chairman."
Pertile said the intent would be lay out a liner on the material the town crew brought in, put a border around it and that would be the skating rink.
He said there's been a lot of problems with gravel where the skating rink currently is in the parking lot.
"Trying to keep the rink free of gravel ... has been real tough," Pertile said. "I shot some grades out there and it (the grassy area) would work just fine."
"Put the tent there, then," Hartzheim said. "You're going to create more problems than you're solving. Trying to put that ice rink on a grassy area of the park. You're gonna spend a lot of money, buying a liner and trying to maintain that, put it somewhere where it hasn't been and it's gonna cause new problems. "
Pertile said he felt the rink on the grassy area would result in a "better product" and longer use out of the rink there during a winter than where the town has been putting it for decades.
"The liner's white so it basically is not going to have any dark background on it," he said.
"You could put the liner on the gravel, too," Hartzheim said. "That's what we talked about doing years ago."
Pertile said gravel needs to be hauled in every year.
"You've got to re-shape the lot, dig out one end with the grader," he said. "You have to cut it down a foot and a half and bring the other side up a foot and a half. By the time you do that, you cause issues with reduced parking down there because there's not as much room and you can't get around the backside. Pushing snow becomes a problem. Logistically, it just ... it's worked but I think we can provide a better surface for a longer period of time by making this adjustment."
Whether or not anybody uses that area for anything other than parking, Pertile said, isn't what it's about.
"It's to provide a quality rink for a longer period of time to the people of Minocqua," he said. "That's kind of the goal."
Pertile said the liner would be around $450.
Hartzheim returned to procedure.
"There's no direction to make that move," he said. "I don't think it's right."
He pointed out even with a liner, there could be a warm year and still not have a very long skating season.
"Now, you're talking about a green space there and what's going to happen to the green space," Hartzheim said. "Creating some new maintenance headaches to deal with."
Pertile said the grassy area was trampled down, grass wasn't growing and it needed to be reseeded.
"We'll add additional seed in the spring and once that turf is established, it should maintain itself just fine," he said. "It's my anticipation in the end, even the park will be a better product."
Hartzheim said with a stretch of warm weather in the spring, the park is getting used.
Pertile countered another reason to make the change was to provide more parking for the downtown area during the winter months.
"We would be able to keep that parking lot plowed if we decided to go all winter," he said. "There would be that much more parking down there."
Pertile said because of the saturation in the parking lot, it can't be graded until May.
Hartzheim said he believes people like where the rink is because, for one thing, it's framed between street lights.
"It creates ... it's a little vignette down there, it's a little venue," he said. "It's framed nicely there, next to the road. Does the skating rink generate money for the town? No. Any charities? No but it's part of our downtown atmosphere for the holidays, it's part of people's family memories and their activities in the holiday season and it helps the businesses downtown. I just think it's a tradition most people wouldn't want to see go away."
Hartzheim said he believed the town would be losing more than it would be gaining.
"At best, it's a wash," he said.
Thompson said he agreed with Hartzheim.
"Even when you see the kids playing a pickup game down there, parking doesn't seem to be an issue and it (the rink) is smaller than it used to be," he said.
"It's nice to be able to see that when you're driving by," Heil said.
Thompson said he would like to see the rink stay where it is.
With a consensus of the board with that sentiment, the rest of the discussion centered on alternative sites for the beer fest, one of them the town's nearby tennis courts.
The license wasn't approved at the meeting but Etten said he would return to talk about other possibilities.
Hartzheim's surprise
Wednesday, Hartzheim said he was surprised with the revelation work on re-locating the ice rink had begun.
However, he also said it wasn't serious as Pertile and he had talked about the possibilities earlier this summer.
"I expressed a lot of doubt as to whether that would be workable and whether it would solving problems or creating new ones," Hartzheim said. "It was basically left there. So, it was a surprise to me to hear at the meeting they had hauled material in there to level it off."
He said the area probably needed that anyway at this point "whether it stays a grassy area or becomes a rink."
"That work probably could be justified regardless," Hartzheim said. "Mark probably thought it was a good enough idea to go off on his own."
He got back to procedure.
"I tried to clarify that type of significant change to a public use will need to be discussed by the chair and/or the town board before the change is made," Hartzheim said. "That's where the discussion diverted from the agenda but it was still tied to it because it revolved around where the Beer Fest was going to be. The whole discussion was that (the Torpy parking lot) was an option to place it there. I guess we needed to have that discussion to determine whether to allow the Beer Fest there or rule it out. We ruled it out."
Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].
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