Emotions come to the surface as Downers Grove Icearena closes its doors

From those first glides on a fresh coat of ice through learning how to fall and get back up again, there are thousands of memories at the Downers Grove Icearena. When news broke on social media in April that the longtime rink would close and move operations to its sister rink in Carol Stream, those memories poured forth from former skaters such as Jean Dudek Sternke.

“That place was my life. That was our life,” said Dudek Sternke, who along with her two sisters spent many years skating at the rink in the mid 1990s. Her mom, Jackie Dudek, taught figure skating and coached a synchronized skating team.

Figure skaters and hockey players loved the “Dinky Rink,” a term of affection for the wall-to-wall, single sheet ice rink on Walnut Avenue in a small industrial zone off 55th Street in Downers Grove.

The rink was built by Richard Glassford, who ventured from his residential real estate business into launching the commercial ice rink business. He was taking his son to hockey practices at the YMCA’s outdoor rink in Elmhurst in the late 1960s when he considered the idea of building a rink closer to home, said Barb Giblin, Glassford’s wife and a longtime colleague.

The idea of the rink was not a whim. Glassford spent two and half years on a feasibility study, considering the location and asking if he built an indoor skating rink, would skaters come? It was a time when ice skating was an outdoor sport, enjoyed on frozen ponds – long before parents schlepped children for lessons and practices as they juggled having one car per family.

Glassford built the rink in 1971 before Interstate 355 was built, although in his feasibility study he learned about the plans, Giblin said. He decided to build a second sister rink in Carol Stream, improving on the design and structure of the Downers Grove location. The Carol Stream Ice Rink opened in 1972.

Giblin said she was a college student the first time she laced up her skates and tried the ice at the Carol Stream Ice Rink. In 1984, she took her 5-year-old son to teach him to skate. Rink management noticed her and offered her a job teaching tot skate. She would become a skating director and eventually the rink manager in Carol Stream.

Giblin, a widow, and Glassford, a widower, were married in 2018 and she helped care for Glassford in his later years as he battled health problems. Glassford died in October 2023.

Giblin said she and Glassford had discussed the future and the closing of the Downers Grove Icearena for some time.

“The Downers Grove building is no longer viable as an ice rink,” Giblin said.

Still, the timing of the decision was important. Giblin and her staff had to make sure the Carol Stream location could accommodate all the ice times for the programs of two locations. In past years, the rinks would consolidate operations during the summer while one of the rinks closed for new ice and repairs. This time, the consolidation of programs would be more than several weeks.

“We used to close one rink each summer, but now I had to know, could I fit all the hockey and in-house programs on one sheet of ice,” Giblin said.

The Downers Grove Icearena is home to six synchronized skating teams, the Dazzlers, offers figure skating classes and rents ice time to hockey clubs.

In her 40 years in the business, Giblin has seen other rinks and organizations fold or accept buyouts from larger businesses. She said her aim is to preserve Glassford’s vision while bringing operations and staff in one location.

“We want to consolidate the two businesses into one to carry out Richard’s iconic legacy,” Giblin said, adding it’s more than just a business. “We have always prided ourselves, at both rinks, as knowing our staff and our customers. It’s what sets us apart from other area facilities. Our customers do not feel they are just a number. We get to know our customers’ names.”

The Downers Grove Icearena felt like another home to the Bronge children, who spent countless hours from their learn-to-skate classes through competitions. Denise Bronge said her oldest son came home from kindergarten one day and announced he wanted to learn how to ice skate.

“And that’s how we started,” Bronge said.

A few years later her daughter at age 4 started with skating lessons and was a competitive skater in addition to joining the synchronized skating team. The youngest son followed his big brother and father’s lead and played hockey.

Bronge said families and skaters would spend so much time together at the rink that they felt like a family.

“There was a camaraderie. Everybody was so close,” Bronge said.

From the time she was a student through her time helping to teach, Dudek Sternke said the Downers Grove Icearena is a big part of her childhood.

“It was my happy place,” she said.

As the rink would draw families from throughout the area, it was a way to meet friends beyond one’s neighborhood and school, allowing individuals to create a community, she said.

For the staff, it’s a family as well.

Giblin said she has staff that has been with her since she started 40 years ago, as well as others who have worked 20 to 30 years at the rink. She said all of the staff from the Downers Grove location are moving to the Carol Stream location.

It has been several weeks of emotions, she said, as she spoke with staff, hockey clubs and the members of the skating teams to share the news about the rink and the final days of operating the Downers Grove location.

The figure skaters performed their final spins on the ice April 29 and have started a new season of practices in Carol Stream. The hockey clubs had their final night in Downers Grove on April 30.

This month, Giblin will begin removing the ice from Downers Grove and then shut down ice compressors as she prepares the building for prospective buyers.

In September, learn to skate classes will resume at the Carol Stream location and children and adults will step out on the ice launching a new era in a vision that was hatched more than 50 years ago.

“I hope Richard realizes how many people came through [the Downers Grove Icearena] and how it affected so many in a positive way,” Giblin said.