Frozen out: Beloved D.C. ice rink faces uncertain future after $40 million rebuild

The problems became clear earlier this month, when the stalagmites appeared.

These mineral formations are a natural curiosity in a cave, but in an ice rink they’re a problem — especially after a $40 million renovation. The nonprofit group that manages Fort Dupont, the historic public ice rink in Ward 7 that closed for repairs in 2023, says a critical dehumidification system isn’t working, leading to condensation and “rain events” inside the building. 

D.C. officials say they are working to fix the problem, and are pushing to open by next month — a few months later than expected. 

But the Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena, which has managed the rink since the mid-1990s, doubts the city can meet that deadline, and has pulled out of running it for at least the next year. In the meantime, the delays have left ice hockey teams and community groups scrambling to find ice time elsewhere — a tough prospect without the city’s only full-sized ice rink.

“We operate off of our customers, and our major customers are leaving every day because we can’t guarantee the rink will be open,” says John Cotten, a longtime fixture in D.C. ice hockey and a board member for the Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena. “It’s a great community asset and the problems need to be fixed.”

‘It was an oasis’

The Fort Dupont Ice Arena was built by the National Park Service in 1976 as part of the nation’s bicentennial, a gift of sorts to a struggling neighborhood in a majority-Black city. The Park Service faced challenges in operating and maintaining the new ice rink, and by 1996 it had turned its daily management to the Friends group.

The nonprofit launched skating programs targeting kids in the neighborhood, and it soon became home to a number of hockey teams, figure-skating clubs, and speed skaters. “The rink was a valuable asset to our community, because people don’t have to play traditional sports like basketball or baseball,” says Cotten. “Ice sports were an alternative, and a lot of kids got opportunities.” 

That included Ralph Featherstone, a D.C. native who got his own start in ice hockey with the Fort Dupont Cannons, a historically Black team. “When I first started playing in the early 1990s, everyone on the team didn’t come from a great family environment,” he says. “The rink served as a safe space. It was an oasis, if you will.”

It also produced notable Black athletes, from speed-skating Olympian Maame Biney to Duanté Abercrombie, a former Gonzaga High School ice hockey player who last year became the inaugural head coach of the men's hockey team at Tennessee State University — a first for a historically Black university. 

The rink also introduced generations of kids to skating with its Kids on Ice program, and became a popular weekend destination for families in D.C.

By the time its 40th birthday neared, it was clear the rink needed an upgrade and an expansion. Discussions with D.C. officials over funding for a new facility with a second rink started as early as 2013, but nothing was finalized until some six years later. Even then, the funding didn’t come without a fight. Eventually, D.C. said there wasn’t enough money to build a second rink, despite protests from the Friends group. 

But it still closed in early 2023 for the $40 million demolition and reconstruction.

Frozen out

Even before work started, though, relations between the Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena and the city had gotten frosty. The group said D.C. was spending too much and getting too little; city officials said construction costs jumped dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic, killing the prospect of the second rink.

But hopes for a summer reopening seemed to evaporate in mid-August, when the Friends publicly posted a message saying that “foreseeable and preventable design flaws” — including with the dehumidification system — made the facility uninsurable and thus inoperable.

Experts tell The 51st that the dehumidification system is a critical component of any rink; without one that works properly, conditions inside can range from mere annoyances to public health dangers. “You’re going to see stalagmites, it’s going to be damp in the air, and you’re at a risk of mold,” says the operator of one public rink in Maryland, who asked not to be identified by name because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. (The 51st is told that the biggest stalagmite that formed in Fort Dupont was four inches in diameter and almost three inches high.)

This operator also says that experienced rink builders know what type of dehumidifier a rink will need based on the size and layout of the building, and the local climate. Given the problems described by the Friends at Fort Dupont, the operator says it’s either that the existing unit is “not running properly or is undersized.”

The Friends group says D.C. didn’t work with it to design and construct the new facility, despite its experience in managing rinks. (Board chairman Murry Gunty owns a company that runs dozens of rinks.) “We have expert knowledge on our board and we were frozen out of a lot of conversations,” says Cotten.

The D.C. Department of General Services, which manages constructions of all city facilities, has pushed back on these claims, posting documents the agency says show proof of consistent engagement with the group. And in a letter to the Friends in mid-August, it said that the arena had received its certificate of occupancy and could safely be opened. “At this time, there are no operational or functional deficiencies that prevent the facility from opening or hosting activities,” read the letter.

Still, DGS itself seemed to backtrack from those claims this month. After D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson wrote DGS Director Delano Hunter that he was “deeply concerned” with what he was hearing about problems with the dehumidification system, Hunter wrote back that “we are implementing both short-term and long-term processes to ensure the system operates optimally.” In a follow-up statement to The 51st, DGS says it expects the system to be “tested and operating fully by the end of October.” 

Still, Cotten says the Friends group has doubts the fix will maintain the necessary conditions inside the rink — especially when the humidity hits.“It will probably work when it’s cold outside,” he says. “But next summer that system won’t be working.”

A city official who spoke to The 51st on background because they are not authorized to speak publicly says that DGS has tried to work with the Friends collaboratively, including by offering to amend the rink lease to guarantee that any issues with the dehumidification system would be the city’s responsibility through the summer of 2026. But in a statement, the Friends says that such an offer was too big a risk to take for a small nonprofit, especially since such systems are expensive.

“Rather than take full responsibility they simply offered to assist with any warranty issues and then transfer full responsibility for their HVAC/dehumidification systems to FFD in the middle of next summer, when dehumidification problems are most likely to occur,” says the statement.

‘Our money is spoken for’

Even the prospect of a slight delay in reopening the rink left its users with little choice but to commit to other rinks for practice and games.

“My wife jumped on the phone, and was able to scrape together enough ice time,” says Brian Vaughn, a manager of the D.C. Titans, a youth ice hockey team with some 70 kids aged 5-14. “We made it work, but it wasn’t easy.”

It also cost Fort Dupont real money. Vaughn estimates that the Titans spend $60,000 to reserve ice time for a season that runs from August into March. That money is now going to a number of rinks outside the city, including the Tucker Road Ice Rink in Fort Washington, which is operated by Prince George’s County. “Even if [Fort Dupont] opened tomorrow, our money is spoken for. It’s impossible to scrape it back,” he says.

It was decisions like those — and the money attached to them — that Cotten says pushed the Friends to make its announcement that it wouldn’t be able to run the rink for the foreseeable future. “It’s a financial issue. We’re losing customers every day,” he says, noting that teams like the Titans help subsidize other offerings at the rink. “We do mentoring programs. We make ice sports affordable. That won’t be there anymore.”

In its statement, DGS says the city is pushing to reopen the rink next month, with or without the Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena. “We know how important this rink is to skaters, families, and local teams. In partnership with the Department of Parks and Recreation, DGS’ priority is to open the facility this fall for public usage,” it says. 

Ralph Featherstone wants the rink to be completed properly, but also understands how dragging out its reopening is impacting how local teams and groups function. Last season the Fort Dupont Cannons couldn’t field a full team; Featherstone says he was told by some D.C. families that driving to suburban rinks for practices and games just wasn’t feasible. 

“That’s difficult for some of our families to get to. Our attendance dropped significantly when we left the rink,” he says. “The programming is going to have to catch up. It’s not going to be what it was when [the rink] shut down. It’s going to take a while.”

In the meantime, lawmakers may get involved. “If it would help, I can schedule a public hearing to fully understand the delays,” Mendelson wrote to Hunter earlier this month. (Hunter did not respond to that specific offer.)

For Cotten, just getting to a functioning ice rink in Fort Dupont is what matters most. “We can sit here and point fingers all day,” he says. “But the facts remain: the rink is not open.”