Portland’s Downtown Ice Rink Is Back for a Second Year

Like movie theaters, bowling alleys, and pay phones, there used to be a lot more skating rinks around here. Society types once glided at the Ice Hippodrome at NW 20th and Marshall—it was touted as the largest such facility in the world when it opened in 1914. Later, a young Tonya Harding practiced her T-stops at Jantzen Beach and the Clackamas Town Center. But in recent decades options had winnowed to Lloyd Center Ice and some far-flung suburban hangars. 

So last winter, when the economic development agency Prosper Portland teamed with vendor Ice-America to set up a temporary rink downtown, it was a new addition that scratched an old itch. Or maybe it was a case of “if you build it, they will skate.” Some 18,000 visitors took a turn on the pop-up rink, nestled in the curve of an on-ramp for the Morrison Bridge.

After the development agency set up a Portland Events and Film Office in 2022, “there’d been a rumbling about what it would look like if we had an outdoor ice rink,” says senior project manager Amanda Park. As they were looking into the “soundness” of various spaces, Park and her team learned that the original design for the 1970s-era World Trade Center included a rink, though it didn’t stay in the plan when the complex was built. “They actually have a Zamboni garage,” Park says. 

Prosper Portland eventually settled on a city-owned parking lot a few blocks away by the Morrison Bridge, where the rink will return this year, November 16 through January 5. Plans call once again for food carts, vendor booths, and partnerships with downtown businesses, plus about 30 temporary jobs for skaters and nonskaters.

That’s a whole month earlier than it opened last year, so this skating season will take in the Thanksgiving holiday and accompanying school break. Maybe some post-turkey salchows will become a new Portland tradition.