The Village of Brown Deer will debut a brand new refrigerated ice rink Friday night, and you're invited to lace up your skates.
Just look for the big white tent in Community Square Park.
Dani Mattefs leads the Brown Deer Parks and Rec Department. She told TMJ4's Andrea Albers that the village has applied for a state grant to make the rink an annual attraction, and to explore options for a year round facility.
The rink is next door to the beer garden, which will be open for Friday night's debut.
"Ice rinks and ice skating, it's kind of very niche sometimes in some parts of Wisconsin so how can we bring that here to Brown Deer?" Dani said. "And so I'm really excited that we have that opportunity and working with Milwaukee Winter Club and utilizing some of their resources we've been able to bring that to life."
Watch: Lace up your skates at the new Brown Deer ice rink.
While touring the rink, Andrea learned that a driving force behind the public-private partnership between Brown Deer and the Milwaukee Winter Club is the growth of girls hockey and a need for more practice space.
"We've outgrown some of our practice facilities, our ice time, so we needed to find more ice time to continue to keep up with our club's growth," said Alex Beer, President of the Milwaukee Winter Club. "So we worked with the village of Brown Deer. They had a vision of also creating an ice rink for the community. And so, it's just a really good blend."
Sponsors, donors and volunteers have been at the rink the last few days, spraying the ice around the clock and making the whole experience possible. The rink is community financed, community run and now the hope is it will get a lot of community use.
Everyone is invited to hit the ice Friday night for an open skate. The Grand Opening kicks off at 5:30 p.m.
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