Tacoma ice rink owner opened just before COVID, says they can safely reopen

Donna Kauffman and her husband dreamed about one day opening their own ice rink, and that’s exactly what they did with Tacoma Twin Rinks. They finished building on February 28, which is right before COVID hit.

The business went into lockdown like many other businesses, though their struggles were unique, having not really even been able to be open before they got hit. But they were able to open the ice rink in June only be forced to close again just last month. Donna Kaufman joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss her experience.

“When you first get shut down, of course, the first thing to go through your mind is what is this, how bad is it? Trying to be worried about people and what we’re going to do? And then when the two weeks gets extended another month, that gets extended another month, and we start worrying about employees and our people trying to make a living,” she said.

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“And then we start worrying about our athletes and what are they going to do as far as recreation and being part of their team and trying to get people back on the ice … the adults that use the building, figure skating and everybody that uses this building for their health and well-being.”

Kauffman has 15 employees and found herself in a very difficult position.

“A lot of them are young, young kids that are just starting out, so they’re not well established, and they’re just trying to get started in the world. We do have a couple a couple of guys that have been with us for almost 30 years now, so that that was really hard. After 30 years and making sure I always took care of my employees, to sort of look around and say, ‘OK, I can’t do this because I’m not allowed to be in business,” she said.

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The ice rink put into place many COVID precautions when they were briefly allowed to be open, including closing locker rooms and having people dress outside, spacing out events and limiting time in the building, and regulating cleaning the air and moving fresh air in, among other basic measures. And she says there were no incidents of COVID spreading that occurred within the building.

“We had two people who got it from work somewhere else — somebody we knew, but not anybody who was ever at the building … Nothing that happened here and nothing that I know that happened in other other rinks in the state … We’re the only sector I think right now that’s not even open somehow, like most of some of the stores, you could go to — I don’t even have a 10%. I can’t be open for training, I can’t even be open at all,” she said.

“I believe we can be open and we could be open safely. And just because we’re open doesn’t mean that we don’t care about the pandemic or other people … We we just want to make sure that across the board, all of us are being taken care of, all of our health and wellness and emotional and mental well-being is all being taken care of. And we could do both. We can have businesses open and keep us safe at the same time.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.