SkateWorld Deer Park is making a comeback with a grand reopening, more than a year after a tornado devastated the popular venue. The beloved roller skating rink in Deer Park, which has been providing family fun since the 1960s, was ravaged by an EF-3 tornado in January 2023, according to KHOU11.
J. Malone, along with a vision and insurance money in hand, could have easily decided to call it quits but chose to reinvest in the family legacy. "I was thinking, ‘dude, I could take this money and run, and then, this is what I do. What was I going to do? And don’t think the community would have liked it very much if I had just closed it. It was a staple," Malone told KHOU11. With a history of skating that goes back to his father, who founded the roller rink, the decision to rebuild was influenced by family and community connections.
Rather than just repairing the damage, Malone saw the disaster as an opportunity to enhance the SkateWorld experience. The Houston Chronicle reports that Malone augmented the space to a sprawling 26,000 square feet, now basked in a purple and blue neon glow. Modern video arcades and a more expansive kitchen and café are just a sliver of the new features that accompany the rink's staple, the 13,000-square-foot maple wood floor beneath the disco ball lights. "It’s got all the bells and whistles," said Malone in a statement obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
As SkateWorld prepared to reopen, general manager Carter Malone felt the strong local demand for the rink's return."It’s kind of hard to close. I mean, we’d post a picture and 20 minutes later it’d have a thousand likes," he expressed in a statement reported by KHOU.
SkateWorld throws open its doors once again on May 24 at 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
