Close to 15,000 people put on roller skates to use the temporary Skate Stadust rink at Guildford Town Centre over an eight-week period.
The small pop-up rink was a popular attraction at the Surrey mall from Sept. 12 until Oct. 31, raising $45,000 for Surrey Fire Fighters Charitable Society from fees for skate and helmet rentals.
All that gear is now being donated to another charitable cause, with 163 roller skates and protective gear going to a youth outreach program operated by Vancouver-based Rolla Skate Club.
"They said they've wanted to run these programs for a while, but haven't had the funding or access to (skates and helmets) to be able to run camps for very underserved communities," explained Kiran Deol, marketing manager for Guildford Town Centre.
"Basically, they want to bring roller skating to the youth, to teach them how to stay active and fit and how fun roller skating is," Deol added. "So we were super excited and happy that finally, they were able to launch these programs with what we could provide them."
With lights and music, the 2,762-square-foot rink at Guildford offered "a nostalgic escape" free of charge, other than skate and gear rentals. Reserved time slots quickly filled for the 65-skater-capacity rink at a vacant retail unit in the Centre Court of the mall, where the Stardust brand was launched in the late-1960s before moving to Whalley in the '70s.
"We had just over 15,000 skaters, and another 10,000 people who came to watch," Deol estimated. "That's around 25,000 visitors in eight weeks, so it was very, very popular. I think it totally blew away our expectations."
Starting Nov. 12, the former rink space will become a "Sugar Shack" operated by Abbotsford-based The Palm Café, which did a "Surfside" food pop-up at the mall last spring. The space will be shared by Surrey Fire Fighters Charitable Society for a gift-wrapping station starting Dec. 1, by donation.
The Skate Stardust rink might return to the mall one day, Deol said, but probably not, now that all the roller skates have been donated to Rolla Skate Club's youth program.
"We have gotten so much interest to not close the rink at all, but of course we love to keep our campaigns fresh and new and different. It'll be something we could always explore again in the future, and we were granted rights to basically run it year over year if we wanted to."
Elsewhere in Surrey, a larger Roller Disco rink is now rolling at the expanded Central City Fun Park, in Bridgeview. The new amusement park is located two doors west of the old one, in the same large building, where a church and storage facility was, next door to The Hive climbing centre.The vacated space is where an indoor go-kart track will be built in coming months.
