Nearly 15,000 people put on roller skates to use the temporary Skate Stadust rink in Guildford town center over a period of eight weeks.

The small ephemeral ice rink was a popular attraction at the Surrey Shopping Center from September 12 to October 31, raising $45,000 for Surrey Firemen’s Charity skate and helmet rental fees.

All that gear is now being donated to another charitable cause, with 163 roller skates and protective gear going to a youth outreach program run by the Vancouver-based company. Rolla Skate Club.

“They said they’ve wanted to do these programs for a while, but they don’t have the funding or access (to skates and helmets) to be able to do camps for very underserved communities,” explained Kiran Deol, marketing director of Guildford. Downtown.

“Basically, they want to bring roller skating to young people, teach them how to stay active and fit and how fun roller skating is,” Deol added. “So we were very excited and happy that they were finally able to launch these programs with what we could provide.”

With lights and music, the 2,762-square-foot Guildford rink offered “a nostalgic escape” for free, other than skate and equipment rental. Reserved time slots quickly filled up for the 65-skater capacity rink in a vacant retail unit in the mall’s center court, where the Stardust brand was launched in the late 1960s before moving in Whalley in the 1970s.

“We had a little over 15,000 skaters and another 10,000 people who came to watch,” Deol estimated. “That’s about 25,000 visitors in eight weeks, so it was very, very popular. I think it totally exceeded our expectations.”

As of November 12, the old skating rink will become a “sugar shack” operated by The Palm Café, of Abbotsford, which has completed a “Surfside” food pop-up at the mall last spring. The space will be shared by the Surrey Fire Fighters Charitable Society for a gift wrapping station starting December 1, thanks to a donation.

The Skate Stardust rink might return to the mall one day, Deol said, but probably not, now that all the roller skates have been donated to the Rolla Skate Club youth program.

“We’ve had so much interest in not closing the rink at all, but of course we like to keep our campaigns fresh, new and different. This will be something we can always explore again in the future, and we “We got the rights to basically, do it year after year if we wanted to.”

Elsewhere in Surrey, a larger Roller Disco rink now rolls at expanded Central City amusement parkin Bridgeview. The new amusement park is located two doors west of the old one, in the same large building, where a church and warehouse were located, next to The Hive climbing center. The freed up space is where an indoor go-kart track will be built. in the coming months.