We think of certain places as being around forever, until suddenly one day they aren’t any more. Highland Ice Arena in Shoreline, open since 1962 and home of countless skating lessons, hockey practices and hours of mittened hanging out, is closing its doors this month. Sibling owners Terry Green and Rick Stephens, whose late parents James and Dorothy Stephens opened the rink 60 years ago, have made the tough decision that it’s time to move on; they’re getting older, and so is the building. Oct. 15 will be the last day of public skating at the arena, with the Zamboni — their fifth, in six decades — circling the ice for the last time.
Skating rinks, in some ways, are time capsules; technology hasn’t made a dent in how we lace up a pair of scuffed rental skates, hobble to the rink, take a deep breath and step onto the waiting ice. I remember the skating rinks of my childhood and teen years, and they looked a lot like Highland: benches scraped by years of metal blades; a row of enticing vending machines; a sense of timelessness, like the outside world couldn’t touch this place where, comfortingly, nothing ever seemed to change.
If you haven’t been to Highland for a while but want to drop by before it closes, you’ll probably find it’s not that different from your skating-lesson days. The pro shop sells skating dresses that resemble what I might have yearned for as a little girl racing around the ice, and the wood paneling around the front desk once looked more modern than it does now. Paper stars still hang from the acoustic ceiling in the lobby, charming animal murals (painted years ago by Terry’s daughter) grace the back hallway, and a black-and-white photo of a young James and Dorothy skating together — his arm wrapped around her waist, their blades shining on the dark ice — is still thumbtacked to a bulletin board.
It’s a small, modest photo — you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it — but it’s a reminder that Highland Ice Arena started with a love story. James and Dorothy met during World War II at an ice arena in Lachine, Quebec. She was home on a break from touring with the Ice Capades; he was a ham radio operator and instructor for the Royal Canadian Air Force who was also an accomplished figure skater and skating coach. They married in 1944 — he was 23, she was 22 — and spent their long lives together, on and off the ice. James died last November; Dorothy followed just a few months later.
The Stephens came to Seattle after the war and co-leased the Ballard Ice Arena through most of the 1950s, but their dream was to build their own rink. They bought a plot of land on Aurora Avenue next to a trailer park in a remote area then called Richmond Highlands and hoped to open during the Seattle World’s Fair. A steel strike delayed construction, but Highland Ice Arena finally opened its doors on Dec. 14, 1962. Rick, then 10 years old, remembered his parents expecting maybe 50 to 75 people to show up on the first day. “We got 500,” he said, laughing. “That first weekend was crazy.”
James and Dorothy’s goal, Rick said, was to be inclusive — “to keep bringing in people who just wanted to skate.” That meant less emphasis on big-name skaters (though the likes of U.S. Olympians Rosalynn Sumners and Tonya Harding trained on Highland ice early in their careers) or AAA hockey, and lots of open ice time for beginners, or adults who fondly remembered lacing up skates as a kid. “We just wanted people to enjoy it.”
Though James and Dorothy gradually handed off management of the rink to Terry and Rick and their spouses several decades ago, they remained involved with the arena — including the decision, made a few years ago, to sell the building. No buyers turned up who wanted to keep it as a skating rink: Thanks to the nearby Lynnwood Ice Center and the shiny-new Kraken Community Iceplex, the north end of the city is oversaturated with places to skate, and it’s a seasonal business, one in which it’s hard to make a living.
After the final days of business, there’ll be one last big reunion of Highland competitive skaters, coaches and judges on Oct. 22. Then the doors will close, with the building eventually demolished and the property redeveloped with two mid-rise apartment buildings, according to the Daily Journal of Commerce. The furnishings are already for sale; the vending machines are empty; the memory boards on the wall show smiling faces of kids who’ve skated at Highland over the years, in a colorful goodbye.
So that’s it for Highland Ice Arena; a good run, to be sure, for a small family business. Terry and Rick say they’re sad, but they’re ready to move on. It’s getting too hard to climb up onto the Zamboni, and the rink never really recovered from the pandemic closures and restrictions with which they carefully complied. Things end.
I dropped by Highland this week, just to smell the cold air of the rink (all rinks smell the same, sort of like snow and anticipation) and get a sense of the place again. I didn’t go skating — the last time I did that, with my niece, my ankles protested and I decided my skating days were done — but I watched two women as they quietly shared the ice during a Thursday morning open skate. Their blades made a delicious crackling sound as they sliced into the ice, sinking into deep edges, gliding into graceful arabesques, moving impossibly quickly. Skating, I remembered, can be like flying. For 60 years, Highland Ice Arena was a place of everyday miracles — a place where blades had wings.
