Second in a series
Re “In a Ruminating Mood, Karagozian Ponders Arena’s Future”
According to landowner Michael Karagozian’s plans a month ago for the still darkened Culver City Ice Arena, theTakahashi family – mother, father, and two of their three daughters, all longtime employees – was to launch a six-month lease to operate the rink on March 1.
They never had a chance.
“The Takahashis were like pawns,” Mr. Karagozian said, in the crisscrossing network of flamingly exchanged words during the past weeks when City Hall and arena officials were pushing back at each other over the late ammonia dispute.
“Various people made them believe the city was going to back off. Once the city yellow-tagged the arena, though, forget it.
“There was only one thing to do,” Mr. Karagozian said from Fresno. “That was to decommission it,” which was done last week, “and then let’s see what’s going to happen.”
The Ice Arena is unlikely to sit around long enough to grow roots. “Plenty of people are interested in the place,” Mr. Karagozian said. “Plenty. Only thing is, with the decommissioning, the place probably will be more attractive because they won’t have to put up with that (bologna). Even if you were going to do a rink there, logically speaking, I don’t know if fix-it-as-you-go would have made that rink viable for even five years.
“Basically, to do a rink, you’re going to have to put $750,000 to a million dollars to run it. The thing is, to make that thing properly viable, you’re going to have to put in a lot more dough than fix-it-as-you-go.
“You know, it would have been all right to have the Takahashis in there. Let ‘em make a little score at least rather than collect unemployment.
“They would have brought back a lot of people who didn’t get jobs when the arena closed up,” Mr. Karagozian said.
(To be continued)
