Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner Longview residents Larry Mulligan and his daughter, 12-year-old Katie, show off their tricks at Kelso Skate World on a recent Friday night. |
Kelso Skate World rolling into the sunset
Saturday, March 24, 2007 11:58 PM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
Printable version
E-mail this articleBy day, he's Larry Mulligan the plumber. On weekends, the 53-year-old Longview resident transforms into Larry Mulligan, roller-disco stud.
He learned to skate in the late 1970s, just before the disco craze swept the nation and roller rinks were the hippest place to shake your groove thing. When Mulligan's family moved from California to Longview in 2000, Kelso Skate World quickly became their favorite hangout.
Now Mulligan and his three kids, 12-year-old twins Katie and Kody, and 14-year-old Kasey, can be found bustin' a move in a swirl of disco lights almost every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
But the Mulligans soon may have to drive to Portland or Centralia to skate. Kelso Skate World is for sale, and it's unlikely it will remain a roller rink under a new owner.
"We have tried everything we know as rink operators in Longview-Kelso, and we cannot succeed. ... Everybody likes having it, but nobody's supporting it," said Mona Cooper, who oversees management of Skate World's four locations -- Kelso, Hillsboro, Springfield and Gresham.
Contrary to rumor, Skate World will remain open until the day it's sold, managers say.
California real estate developers Bill Cook and Marvin "Buzz" Oates opened Kelso Skate World in 1978 at a cost of nearly $1 million. They own the property, and they own a share of Skate World, Inc., the business that operates the roller rink.
According to Cooper, since 1980, Skate World, Inc., has not paid a cent of its $6,000 monthly rent to Cook and Oates for use of the facility. Making matters worse, the 30-year-old business at 2219 Talley Way has been losing money for the last two years. The losses prompted Cook and Oates to put the property on the market last summer.
The business partners could afford to let their investment sit with no financial return. The two men, who are approaching age 90, have built about 20 skating rinks on the West Coast because when they were growing up, there was nothing for kids to do, Cooper said.
The rink has remained open 25 years longer than it should have "purely out of the good hearts of the owners," she said, reached Friday at her office in Sacramento, Calif. "It's been a gift that Longview-Kelso's had 30 years."
The rink's income doesn't cover the electricity, insurance or property taxes anymore, and the owners have picked up the slack.
"It's one thing to supply the building with no return, but it's another thing to subsidize the operation," Cooper said. "We really feel like our hands are tied. ... If we can't have community support, it's time to close it up and make it a warehouse."
A blazing start
In a blaze of red-and-orange carpet and flashing disco lights, Kelso Skate World opened Nov. 22, 1978.
After 32 years in business, the maple-floored Rol-o-Way rink at Vandercook Way and Eighth Avenue in Longview was months from shutting down, and the Twin City Skating Rink in Kelso was ancient history.
The timing seemed right to open a roller rink -- and not just to Cook and Oates. In the 1970s, glossy, epoxy-coated concrete replaced wood floors. The new plastic wheels rolled faster and smoother than the old ones. Then people decided it was more fun to skate to the throbbing beat of modern pop music, rather than the traditional pipe organ music, and a fad was born.
Roughly 1,100 new skating rinks opened across the United States between the late 1970s and 1983, bringing the total number of rinks to 2,300, according to officials at Roller Skating Association International, a trade association representing skating rink owners and operators.
According to a September 1979 Daily News story, Kelso Skate World attracted 132,000 customers in its first nine months of business -- roughly 3,666 people a week.
The public flocked to the rink for lessons, contests, skate dance demonstrations, exercise classes, fund-raisers and birthday parties. Groups such as the Kelso Skateworld Dance and Figure Club practiced there for national rollerskating competitions. Several local skating champions emerged, taking state, regional and national titles.
Kelso Skate World, Cooper said, "started out incredible."
Today, business has dropped to about 500 customers a week, Skate World managers say.
Trouble begins
Skate World's fortune changed for the worse in 1980, said Cooper, who attributes the downturn to the economic recession that followed Mount St. Helen's giant eruption that year.
Industry experts, however, say Kelso wasn't alone. Rollerskating's popularity plunged everywhere in the early 1980s, resulting in the closure of many rinks across the country, said Joe Champa, president of Indianapolis-based Roller Skating Association International.
By the mid-1980s, the number of skating rinks had fallen from 2,300 nationwide to 1,200, Champa said Friday. Business slowly began to increase again and then plunged briefly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But for the last three years, rink operators in most parts of the country are experiencing double-digit increases in revenues, Champa said.
Today, 900 roller rinks are members of the skating association, and Champa estimates there are an additional 300 to 400 smaller rinks in the United States that aren't members.
"The fact is, our business is good. There are people that are just totally delighted with the business," said Champa, who is opening a $3 million skating rink next month in Lexington, Ky. "The fact is, you gotta do the right things to keep the people happy and coming."
A terrible compliment
Today, Kelso Skate World is a ghost of its former glory. The once-vibrant floor-to-ceiling carpet is dingy and patched with duct tape. Everything looks the same as it did on opening day -- just older and heavily worn. It's never been remodeled.
"People come in and say, 'Wow, it's the same as it was when I was a kid,' " Skate World manager Buzz Stratton said Friday.
Champa said that's the worst compliment a rollerskating operator can get.
"That's nice and nostalgic for those people, but new customers want something different. When things get old, you gotta change. ... You gotta keep up with the times," said Champa, whose family has owned as many as eight rinks at once. "If you don't keep the rink up, there's no way they're gonna come."
Stratton said if he owned Kelso Skate World, he'd yank out the carpet, add neon lights and install windows to let in natural light. It would take about $100,000 to renovate the rink into a modern rollerskating center, he guessed.
"I think there's opportunity there," he said.
To Cooper, the odds against running the business profitably in Kelso seem insurmountable. The state's hourly minimum wage increase in January to $7.93 has driven up labor costs. The monthly utility bill is $6,000. The skating rink is deep in Kelso's industrial area, unserved by any bus route, making it tougher for kids to get there. The surrounding communities are too small to provide a stable customer base.
Add up employee wages, music licensing fees, utilities, supplies, insurance and taxes, and the rink costs $20,000 a month to operate -- and that doesn't include rent, Cooper said.
To make ends meet, Skate World would have to charge $12 per skating session, she said. (Admission now ranges from $4.25 to $5.75). But such a price hike would make an afternoon of skating unaffordable for many Kelso families, she said, adding that she doesn't see another way to significantly boost revenue.
She finds the situation "heartbreaking," said Cooper, who personally hired the first crew and set up the first snack bar at Skate World in 1978.
"We can't put a bar in, we can't put a restaurant in," she said. "Trying to be wholesome and entertaining and catering to families isn't enough anymore."
The owners would consider leasing the facility for $4,000 a month to someone who wanted to take over its operations, but no one's come forward, she said.
It would be a great service to the community if the city of Kelso wanted to operate and subsidize the rink, "but we don't see that happening," Cooper said.
"I wish the community would've stepped up. But it's like it was never important enough," she said bitterly. "No one's coming. Why bother? Why do it?"
It would take more Mulligans
Kelso Skate World's regular customers, though, want to keep the rink alive.
Skating is the only exercise he gets, said Larry Mulligan, whose burly form takes on a weightless agility once his skates touch the polished rink. On a recent Friday night, he danced to the hip-hop beat, legs scissoring as he skated backwards beside his equally nimble daughter.
"A lot of people know me as the rollerskating plumber," said Mulligan, a technician for All-Out Sewer & Drain Service. "I see a lot of my customers here. They're just amazed to see a fat old man like me on skates."
Maybe if Skate World advertised more and updated the building, customers would return, he speculated. Maybe someone will come save it.
Losing the roller rink would hit the community hard -- but if that happens, he said, he and his kids will find a tennis court to skate on.
"The only thing to do in this little town," Mulligan said, "is go rollerskating."
Past Month's Most Commented Stories