Please sign this petition in an effort to persuade Mayor Skip Henderson, City Manager Isaiah Hugley, Deputy City Manager Lisa Goodwin, and the Columbus City Council to move all court proceedings to another location and open the Columbus Ice Rink for public use immediately.  

Background: 

The Columbus Ice Rink has been closed to the public since January 2021 and has instead been used two times a week as a location to hold state court and jury selection due to COVID-19 restrictions.  This seizure of the facility resulted in the cancellation of all public skating services and the movement of all activities for the Columbus Hockey Association (CHA) and the Columbus Figure Skating Academy (CFSA) to the Columbus Civic Center.  These fledging organizations, that provide over 400 hundred children and adults a safe, fun enviornment to participate in the sports that love, are being bled dry by the lack of ice time.  Not only do they need to compete for ice time with the local professional hockey team and semi-professional indoor football team but are now losing more time to two startup semi-professional indoor soccer teams and the many shows, concerts, and events now scheduled to take place at the Civic Center.  There has been no public skating available in Columbus during this time as well, further depriving Columbus Citizens of a safe, fun, and affordable activity. 

Additionally, the CHA and CFSA have had on numerous occasions lost previously scheduled ice time do to events either being scheduled on top of their ice time or events moved into the Civic Center last minute most notably the events associated with the Fountain Classic football game on November 6th, 2021, the Latino Festival from September 16th – 19th, 2021.  This is in addition to the numerous occasions the CHA and CFSA lost ice time due to poor time management and forward thinking by the City when scheduling the set-up and teardown of the football and soccer playing surfaces and stages for concerts, shows, and graduations.  

The City Government has also taken advantage of the reasoning for the Ice Rink to be closed in order to host other events not tied to court sessions including:

1) A Columbus Consolidated Government hiring fair on June 11th, 2021.
2) An E-Sports and Gaming event on June 20th, 2021.
3) Registration for a “Price is Right” game show event on November 7th, 2021.
4) A Columbus Consolidated Government hiring fair on January 5th, 2022.             

The City Government has made no effort to provide a timeline or key COVID milestones to move court out of the Ice Rink and reopen it for proper use by the public.

Solutions:

We propose the following solutions in order to facilitate the necessary actions of the local judicial system and to return use of the Columbus Ice Rink back to its intended patrons, our children, and the public taxpayer.  

1) Back to the Government Center: the original location for jury selection and state court.

2) Psalmond Road Supercenter: a 19,000 square foot recreation center.

3) Shirley Winston Supercenter: a 19,000 square foot recreation center.

4) Columbus Convention and Trade Center: 182,000 square foot event center with 17 meeting rooms.

If you love hockey, figure skating, or just want the City of Columbus to be able to offer ice skating this year, please sign and share this petition! Thank you for your support!