WHY HAVE SYDNEY ROLLER SKATING RINKS CLOSED? One word: litigation. Gone are the carefree days of the 80's where people took responsibility for their own actions. Welcome to the 00's where insurance premiums are through the roof, and it's much more profitable to sell up. Guess who loses? Everyone!

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Fancy a night out at the local rink? Better get your skates on
By Sunanda Creagh - Urban Affairs Reporter / April 18, 2007 / The Sydney Morning Herald


You spin me right round � from left, Sarah Soleiman, Clara Younes, Yasmin Elsayed and Ghadeer Elsayed at a Friday 13th party at the Roundabout Youth Centre's roller rink in Sefton. Photo: Dallas Kilponen

LUCRATIVE land values, sky-high insurance costs and flagging interest have pushed the number of NSW roller rinks to an all-time low.

Sydney, which had 14 rinks a little over five years ago, now has only two.

"People come a long way to skate here because there's nowhere left to go," said Thong Van, a youth worker at Sefton's Roundabout Youth Centre, which runs a roller rink.

Bob Kersten, who manages Penrith's Skatel rink, said most rinks had closed in the past five or six years.

"Mount Druitt closed in about 2001 and the Windsor one closed a few years later. Caringbah had a beautiful rink; it's gone. Same with the one in Northmead," Mr Kersten said.

Sydney had been particularly hard hit, he said, because selling the land was more profitable than running a rink.

The advent of rollerblades, which are used in parks and on streets and promenades, had compounded the problem.

"We used to have 200 or 300 teenagers here on a Friday night but patronage has declined. It just went out of style," Mr Kersten said.

Petersham's Majestic Rollerrink - once so busy that it featured a sign near the skate hire that read, "One Line Only. No Screaming" - is the latest to fall prey to market forces. It was sold in February to developers keen to build a shopping centre and apartments.

"For the last 30 years it's been struggling as a roller rink," said the new owner, Simon Darke, who bought the building after it had been on the market for three years.

Mr Darke, who plans to retain the heritage-listed facade and interior balconies, said there had been two options for the building. "It can be either an adaptive reuse, or the building will be left to rot and the heritage will disintegrate with it."

George Kavourmas, secretary of the Pan-Koakos Association that bought the rink in 1985, said the boom times were over. "There was a gay group that used to come every Tuesday night - that was the busiest time," he said. "I know some people have fond memories, but the financial reality is different. There were a couple of claims against the association, and when HIH fell apart the insurance became expensive."

A finance professor at the University of NSW, John Evans, said HIH had probably offered artificially low-cost professional indemnity insurance to garner a prime slice of the market.

When the insurance company collapsed in 2001, prices corrected, Professor Evans said.

And the signs warning punters they skate at their own risk? "Those signs don't mean anything. There's always a lawyer out there that will go after you if there's an accident," he said.

Ice skating, however, is experiencing a surge in popularity despite huge overhead costs, with nine ice rinks operating in Sydney.

Ice Skating Australia's NSW spokesman, Michael Santer, cited TV shows such as Dancing on Ice and the Winter Olympics as factors bolstering interest.

Gawaine Davis, from the NSW branch of Skate Australia, said the roller rink trendwas worldwide and probably irreversible.

"We've actually started some plans to try and find a venue ourselves and are looking for support from the State Government. We figure it's the way to survive," Mr Davis said.

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Falls happen: court rejects skating payout
By Leonie Lamont / August 6 2003 / The Sydney Morning Herald

Roller rink owner Sue Weber is spending a lot of time on the circuit these days. The legal and insurance circuit, that is, not the rollerskating one.

"I've had four solicitors and three barristers all send me congratulations over this win," she said yesterday.

"It's been a long, drawn out and very stressful case."

On Friday the Court of Appeal threw out a District Court judgement in which Julianne Tombleson, 39, was awarded $350,000 after breaking her wrist while rollerskating at Ms Weber's Skate Plus rink at Caringbah.

Although Ms Weber feels vindicated by the win, she says the combined $100,000 public liability premiums - coupled with rising property prices and lease increases in Sydney - are forcing rinks to close.

In the past 12 months rinks at Castle Hill, Campbelltown and Windsor had closed, she said. Some of the remaining rinks were lobbying governments for help in funding the large rinks, which would allow speed skating and hockey to continue as sports.

"I have been in this business for 19 years, and I had only one case in the first 15 years of the business, and we settled out of court for $10,000," Ms Weber said. "Then, within 18 months, you get 12 cases."

Having had public liability cover with the doomed HIH, Ms Weber's money from the Government and industry bail-out came only days before the Tombleson case was heard by District Court Judge Christopher Robison. She spent part of the day at court yesterday, where her business and the Department of Education are being sued by a schoolgirl who hurt her leg during school sport.

Bus spells bye bye to northern city rollers
By Alexandra Smith / June 19, 2004 / From The Sydney Morning Herald


From pirouettes to T-ways . . . Alley Mulvey, 12, and Kevin Cheng, 15, during a figure skating lesson at the Skateworx, Northmead. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Figure skater Lisa Weber has lost count of the number of little girls she has coached to pirouette on wheels.

Her husband, Gary, knows no other career than running a rollerskating rink - he opened his first rink a week before he turned 21 - and their two children learned to skate at the same time they learned to walk.

But in October, the couple will have to abandon their rollerskating dream when their rink is demolished and the Briens Street, Northmead business disappears to make way for the State Government's north-west busway.

The $540 million transitway, the second in the State Government's T-way network, will link Blacktown to Castle Hill, and Parramatta to Rouse Hill with frequent bus services.

Together, the two routes will stretch about 32 kilometres and include 39 covered stations, which will have high-tech features like information about how far away a bus is, emergency help points, and closed-circuit TV.

The transitway network was to open in December 2006 but the Roads Minister, Carl Scully, pushed that back a year as part of the April mini-budget, when he rescheduled several road projects because of cuts in spending.

The $260 million Liverpool to Parramatta bus transitway, which opened last year, is made up of 21 kilometres of off-road bus lanes and 10 kilometres of on-road bus lanes like those elsewhere in Sydney.

The Government, as part of its Action for Transport 2010 program, has planned other T-ways to connect Blacktown and Wetherill Park, Parramatta and Strathfield, and Penrith and St Marys.

While the huge public transport project, worth $800 million in total, will dramatically improve travel for residents in the booming western Sydney region, it will be at the expense of dozens of homes and businesses.

Over the years the numbers of rollerskating rinks have slowly dwindled. Today just three remain in Sydney.

If the Webers can not find another home for their business, which hosts at least 1000 skaters through the doors each week, rollerskating in Sydney could become extinct.

They do not own the site, but are pushing for compensation from the Government.

"But you can't be paid for your heart and soul," Mrs Weber said.

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