Re “5-0 Vote for Rink Status – Meaningful or Poof?”
Richie Takahashi, whose four-member family dedicated decades of employment to the Culver City Ice Arena, watched from a distance the pre-City Council meeting rally his daughter Shannon had organized last evening in front of City Hall.
Her cheering leaders were hollering “Save the Rink,” but Ms. Takahashi’s father, off to the side, was of a different mindset.
Grim.
Did Mr. Takahashi believe that the closed rink’s return to the news, with a proposed historic designation, would help to revive the arena?
“Tonight will not make a difference,” said the man who tended the ice for more than 20 years.
He is pessimistic about the rink reopening in the near term.
“I don’t know what is going to happen,” he said. “But you need investors to make it happen either way.
“No one has stepped up. Other than having a number of people who want to skate there again, the investors haven’t shown up.
“As much as Hollywood and stars said they would help, they haven’t. No one has stepped up.”
Why not?
“That’s Hollywood. They are all talk.”
For Mr. Takahashi, whose working life was the rink while his three daughters were growing up, the last five months have been as dank as the present condition of the Ice Arena.
“I have been looking for work,” he said, “and getting no calls. Been rough. It’s rough out there right now.”
Shannon Takahashi was decidedly upbeat after the Council’s unanimous support of the historical citation.
After hearing a representative of the Stanley Cup champion Kings declare renewed interest in the property, she told the newspaper late last night she is hopeful “the new historical status kind of forces the Karagozians (owners of the land) not to demolish the building. I am hoping we can bring the rink back and provide Culver City with skating again, like the last 52 years.”
