| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Winter Lodge 3009 Middlefield Road |
| 2006 |
| The Winter Lodge: Skating Through the Political Process It’s been said that democracy is a participatory sport. And indeed in America, it’s only the citizens and communities that can effectively lobby their elected officials that tend to get what they want. Contrary to popular opinion, politicians do listen to their constituents. After all, anytime phone calls to Congressional offices are running 10-1 against a controversial bill, you can bet its political viability will be pretty short- lived. It’s also true that through the years virtually every urban blight-causing, cross-city highway has wound up in the wards of the poor and politically unorganized. So it is possible to fight city hall, but you’ve got to have the time, money and stamina to attend council meetings, collect signatures, stand on street corners, and wear down the system. Of course, in Palo Alto, citizens can be pretty persistent in that wearing down process. And that’s one reason that Palo Alto remains the kind of city where you want to raise your kids. They play the sport of democracy pretty well here --- and it shows. Case in point: that once-doomed local institution known today as the Winter Lodge. In 1981, it was announced that the only permanent outdoor ice skating rink west of the Sierra Nevada was scheduled to close at the end of the 1983 winter skating season. In response, local ice skating enthusiasts waged an epic battle, overcoming reams of red tape and eventually proving that intense political participation can pay off. Ice skating in Palo Alto began in 1956 with retired San Jose State engineering professor Duncan Williams. After migrating to Palo Alto from chilly Wisconsin, Williams began experimenting with how to freeze an ice skating rink in milder weather. Using a refrigerant system with a brine solution in the pipes and some strategically placed shade, Williams managed to create a fully-functional outdoor rink in Palo Alto’s less- than-freezing winter. But while his engineering skills proved successful, it was at first unclear whether his market strategy was particularly honed. As Williams would later say, “It was sort of a wild adventure. I didn’t have very good grounds to know it would [succeed].” But on February 15th, 1956, “The Winter Club” opened in a largely undeveloped area along Middlefield Road. It was an immediate hit. California ice was a skate down memory lane for the many non-native Palo Altans who spent their childhood winters twirling triple salchows or falling on their backsides at rinks back East. While for home-grown California kids, lacing up winter skates had a novelty appeal --- and a little taste, perhaps, of what they were missing in a single-climate region. The Winter Club consisted of a larger outdoor rink as well as a separate smaller area for “patch practicing” figure skaters. It operated mainly on individual and family memberships and by 1959 the rink was running at a 500 family peak capacity. The Winter Club hosted activities such as youth hockey, junior ice follies, birthday parties as well as open skate nights and throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, Williams proved the naysayers wrong by turning a consistent profit in the warm California sun. By 1981 however, the Winter Club’s driving force was finally hanging up his skates. At the end of his 1983 lease, Williams planned to retire and let owner Richard Peery knock down the ice rink and put up condos. It was then that a small group of ice skating aficionados rather innocently entered the fray. Hoping to keep ice skating in Palo Alto, they proposed either renovating the rink or building a new one. The pro-skating movement began with the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Winter Club in 1981. Their initial pitch was to build a new rink at half-completed Greer Park, but a rather confrontational meeting with 40 or so West Bayshore residents scuttled that plan. Regrouping, the Friends of the Winter Club found another city-owned parcel just west of the Palo Alto Golf Course near Geng Road. After getting a favorable lease option from the city council, the skaters were soon making plans to build a grand 250 x 150 foot outdoor ice rink that they dubbed the Friendship Pavilion. It would serve as an ice skating rink in the colder months and host dance, music and gymnastics in the summertime. But the group found it could not raise the money in private donations to build the Pavilion. Back at the drawing board, the Friends asked the Palo Alto City Council to put up a loan to build it. The city balked at that idea. Then scrapping all hopes for a new ice rink, the group entertained the possibility of renovating the closing Winter Club. Back to the council they went to request $175,000 to make “crucial repairs” to the Middlefield site. Again the Council said no. But Palo Altans are a tenacious group. As the day of reckoning approached in April of 1983, the pro- skating forces re-organized under the leadership of future Palo Alto councilman Jack Morton as the Trust for Community Skating. Seeking the help of the YMCA to run the rink and appealing to better angels, the Trust convinced landowner Richard Peery to give them a one year lease extension and even successfully lobbied the city council to pony up $25,000 for repairs. In September of 1983, the rink opened for the first time in 27 years without Duncan Williams. It was largely unchanged except for its new name --- The Winter Lodge. But skating in Palo Alto was still on thin ice. As the end of the 1984 season rolled around, the Trust for Community Skating was still desperately searching for the $2.5 million needed to purchase the Lodge from Peery. Again, the skaters went into City Hall looking for a loan and again came out empty-handed. So instead the Trust decided to circumvent the council with a direct appeal to the public. In an attempt to force the council’s hand, the Trust collected signatures to put a measure on the fall ballot requiring the city to “provide, fund and maintain an ice skating facility.” But passage of the initiative seemed unlikely once the idea was lambasted in the local press as overly directive. Meanwhile as the 1985 election approached, the skaters came up with a better idea. In an inspired bit of real estate creativity, the Trust cooked up a plan in which the city would swap their land at Geng Road for Peery’s Winter Lodge plot. Peery would get to develop his new land while the Winter Lodge could stay. Everyone would be a winner. Only you don’t just go around swapping city land like baseball cards. Lawyers deduced that not one, but two ballot initiatives would need voter approval in order to legalize the scheme. One initiative was necessary to allow the city to make such a trade at all while another authorized the use of the Geng Road parcel (technically park land) to be used for non-park purposes. Finally, in November 1985, the voters approved both Measure A and Measure B overwhelmingly. A few more precarious years went by as details were ironed out and the negotiated swap was consummated, but in the end the Trust had finally found a way to keep skating in Palo Alto. Today the Winter Lodge has one of the largest skating schools in the country, enrolling over 3,000 skating students per season and in 2007, it was ranked as one of the top 10 outdoor ice skating experiences in the country. The Winter Lodge remains one of Palo Alto’s hidden gems, a timeless place with an unlikely story. But while the glistening ice and overhead pine trees may give it a sense of timeless inevitability, the truth is that its existence today is the result of some very timely political grunt work. -Matt Bowling |
| The benches near the fireplace. (Winter Lodge) |
| Lesons in the indoor rink. |
| Winter Lodge's mascot, the skating polar bear named "DW Bear" was drawn for Duncan Williams by a Disney animator. (Winter Lodge) |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto Historical Association, Wikipedia, The Winter Lodge, Peninsula Times Tribune |
| The Winter Lodge outdoor rink with tall trees overhead. |
| Memories added by readers: |
| Skaters abound. |
| Two skaters at the Winter Club in 1977. |
| Council member Jack Morton still volunteers at Winter Lodge having helped keep it in existence in the 1980s. (Palo Alto City Website) |
| This Google Maps view shows how the rink is nestled in what is now a residential area. The actual rink is that black rectangle to the right of the tennis courts. |
| "Is The Winter Club still there? Spent many days there in skating lessons and many evenings - when 'couples skate' was announced always wondering if 'that cute boy' (whomever it might have been at the time) would ask me to skate with him." -Jeanette |
| "My family lived around the corner growing up in the 50's. We (the 3 daughters) all were in ice shows held there, year after year. I can still remember the fireplace and hot chocolate machine, I am so happy now at age 54 that it is still there, I plan on taking my grandson. I have a short video clip from the 50's of the rink....." -Janice |