Ice skating rink fundraising enters home stretch

Josh Rogers is surely beginning to feel a little like Santa Claus when the jolly old elf’s sleigh is being filled to overflowing for his annual trip to visit the homes of good little boys and girls around the globe.

It’s the proverbial crunch time, and Rogers can hardly wait to unwrap one of the biggest Christmas gifts Sallisaw has ever received.

While many will celebrate the yuletide season with images of sugar plums dancing in their heads, Christmas trees abundantly decorated beside a warm fireplace, and laughter and glee from those dressed up like Eskimos reveling in Christmas cheer — after all, Christmas memories are made of this — Rogers is putting the finishing touches on the city’s first-ever ice skating rink.

“We’ve never had an ice skating rink in town before,” he says, almost giddy with excitement. “People are gonna be really excited about that.”

But crunch time for Rogers, president of Sallisaw Main Street, means the last six weeks before the temporary ice skating rink opens and six weeks left of fundraising to pay for something Sallisaw has never before experienced.

Josh Rogers

Rogers, sanguine with a confidence that donors will come through when it counts the most, heads into the home stretch with an enthusiasm that is as contagious as it is optimistic.

“We’re almost halfway there — we like the sound of that,” he says of the $35,000 needed to cover “everything from the ice rink itself and insurance.”

In the first few weeks after Rogers first announced in February that the new downtown attraction was planned to fill the traditional December activities void, donations from businesses and individuals were brisk, buoying Rogers’ hopes that the fundraising goal would be met — if not surpassed — quickly.

But as the summer doldrums set in, expectations for Christmas were replaced with warmweather holidays like the Fourth of July and Labor Day.

But now that autumn has arrived — and many national retailers are already bedecked with Christmas cheer — it’s time to look beyond even Halloween and Thanksgiving to December’s bustling season of joy and excitement.

To be sure, a monthlong venture of this type doesn’t come without a price tag.

“We encourage people who are considering giving a donation, now is the time to do it,” Rogers says. “We’ve been paying already on everything, so now’s the time to go ahead and do it. It’s a good tax write-off at the end of the year.

“It’s solely a Main Street project, so we’re looking for financial sponsors,” Rogers says. “Of course, Main Street is paying for it, but the more sponsors we get, the more extra activities we can have in the downtown. We’re looking at having events — could even be live music or could be live reindeer, something different on the weekends, maybe even looking at some carriage rides — but the more financial support we get from the community, the more we’ll be able to bring to the downtown.

“Anyone in the community can donate. You can donate as little as $1. It could just be a family in town that wonders what they can do to help, and maybe they want to donate $25. That helps, $25 helps. If everybody in town gave $25, the rink would be paid for. It’s the people that make these things work. Everything counts,” Rogers says.

But while cold, hard cash is a priority, warm, willing bodies are the next most important.

“We’re also looking for volunteer groups and organizations that want to take on working the rink different weekends. Of course, Main Street will be facilitating the activity, but we need different groups to come out and volunteer. No one’s getting paid for this. We will charge [admission], and the money will go back to support the Main Street organization to help cover the costs of doing more for the downtown, so we’re looking for people who are interested in volunteering.

“It can be anything from a youth group, a church group; it can be a bank, it can be an organization, a business — people that want to come out and just volunteer for a night.” Rogers says that during December, there will be about 20 slots that need to be filled to accept money for admission and check out ice skates.

Scheduled to be open Thursday through Sunday nights in December, the portable ice rink will be located at Stage Park at the corner of Choctaw Avenue and Oak Street.

“We’re working all the small details out. We’re still working out the pricing, trying to be comparable to the other rinks that are in the area. Those details will be squared away at the first meeting in November,” Rogers says.

Those wanting to donate or volunteer should call Carol Brown, Main Street administrative assistant, at 918-776-7920. Be sure to stipulate that the donation is for the ice skating rink, Rogers says.

The fundraiser features seven different sponsorship levels:

• Partner — $1 to $499

• Bronze — $500 to $999

• Silver — $1,000 to $1,499

• Gold — $1,500 to $2,499

• Platinum — $2,500 to $4,999

• Diamond — $5,000 to $9,999

• Black Diamond — $10,000+ Donations go toward the expense of the rink, insurance and costs directly associated with providing the rink. Any overage will be used for additional holiday experiences.

“Really, on something like this, it’s the people that make this work,” Rogers says. “We can do all the work for it, but if people don’t come and support the downtown and support local and shop local, this doesn’t work. So the more people that come and support it — with all of our events — the more events we’ll be able to do.”

Why ice skating?

Pointing out that Sallisaw Main Street sponsors and coordinates a lot of events each year for Sallisaw’s downtown business district, Rogers says the question arose about what the organization might do in the wintertime to increase activity in the downtown area.

“In the wintertime, there’s not a lot going on in the downtown,” Rogers says. “We talked to the city, and asked them what we could do for the downtown as far as events. They said that December seems like a time in the downtown when there’s not a lot going on. So what can we do to bring more people into the downtown area? That’s when we landed on an ice skating rink. The dream of that became a reality quickly.

“After doing some research and pricing, we saw that it was going to be feasible. So we pulled the trigger on it, and we’ve got the rink rented, so we’re excited about that. We’ve paid our deposit, so it’s for sure happening,” he says.

Rogers says Sallisaw Main Street is looking at the possibility of renting out the ice rink to area schools for trips during the school days.

Sallisaw Main Street has partnered with Sasquatch Printing to launch the community fundraiser to offset costs of the monthlong venture.

“Main Street took on the responsibility of this, but Main Street is a nonprofit, of course, funded by the community, businesses, business leaders, just community people,” Rogers reminds. “And we believe the community will come together. People want to see things in Sallisaw in the downtown area.

“All this is growth. So the ice skating rink is something that the city had talked to us about — what could we do to increase activity in the downtown in December. This is something that people can come and bring their whole family.”

While Oklahoma is well known for wintertime ice — at least on roadways and frequent ice storms — there’s no guarantee that December nights in Oklahoma will be cold enough to keep the ice from becoming a swimming pool. So how will skaters be assured they’ll have a frozen surface on which to glide and pirouette?

Rogers says the national company from which Sallisaw Main Street is renting the rink utilizes synthetic ice, a practice commonly used in the southern part of the U.S. He says it’s the same company that provides the ice rinks in Fort Smith and Van Buren, and synthetic ice is used for those rinks.

“The skaters will not even know, if they’ve never skated on ice. Nobody ever knows the difference if they’ve never skated. It’s slick. It’s easy to maintain in our warm temperatures,” Rogers says. “Nobody here will know the difference, the national company said.”

It’s not known what size the rink will be, but Rogers says he expects it to be “one that will skate quite a few people at a time — I think 50 to 60.”

The ice rink for the holidays and the outdoor market in the summer are the two newest additions to the Sallisaw Main Street calendar. The organization will continue to sponsor annual community favorites, such as the barbecue cook-off during Diamond Daze and the chili cook-off at Cruizin’ 64 in October. Plus, the popular Pink Pig trailer, which offers delicious funnel cakes and Indian tacos, pops up from time to time.

“We’ve got four or five big events we’re planning for the year,” Rogers reiterates. “This is the most we’ve ever done. So volunteers are really needed. That’s what we’re needing now is help. It’s always just been a few of us, and a lot of people didn’t even know they could become involved.”

Sallisaw Main Street meets at noon on the first Monday of the month at the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce offices.