Skate-O-Mania will keep its wheels rolling. The Albuquerque roller rink, which had warned it might shut down by the end of the year over insurance troubles, announced it secured coverage for the next 12 months and will remain open.
Owners said the rink's current insurance agreement was set to conclude at the end of November, according to a report from abqjournal.com. That looming deadline fueled weeks of uncertainty for a business owner Courtney Ballew said draws somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 visitors a year. In an announcement reported by KOB 4, the rink's owners said they have now secured insurance coverage for the next year and plan to use that time to work toward a more lasting solution to keep the rink open for decades.
A Scramble That Started Months Ago
The warning signs had been building for a while. Ballew said earlier that the rink could close as soon as November because he could not secure insurance, and that his family had been trying to secure coverage for the last few months, per the same kob.com report. Those were not idle worries, given that skating rinks nationally have faced a tightening insurance market in recent years.
Community support reportedly played a role in turning things around, with the owners crediting it for helping them find an insurance provider. The rink's roots run deep in Albuquerque: Ballew's family opened it in January 1980 at 400 Paisano NE under the name Roller King, according to abqjournal.com's reporting, making it a fixture that has hosted generations of date nights and hangouts in the city.
Stranger Things Brought a New Wave of Skaters
Skate-O-Mania's profile got a major boost when Netflix filmed scenes for Stranger Things there. The production rented and remodeled the space for about a month in August 2021, with the season featuring the rink arriving in 2022, abqjournal.com reported. Netflix also let the rink keep the upgrades made for filming, according to a separate kob.com report, and the rink saw a huge increase in business after the show premiered.
That bump in visibility didn't shield the business from the financial pressures squeezing it. A KOAT report attributed to a co-owner said insurance costs had risen by more than 1,000% after the pandemic, according to koat.com. Separately, Ballew told abqjournal.com that insurance premiums had risen 1,100% since 2019 and that legal claims against the business had increased 2,000% compared with the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s — figures that differ somewhat from the KOAT account but point to the same underlying strain.
A Challenge Facing Rinks Beyond New Mexico
Skate-O-Mania's insurance squeeze echoes a pattern seen elsewhere in the country, even if the specifics don't necessarily translate directly to New Mexico. In Florida, roller rinks have dwindled from 130 in the 1970s to just 37 in 2023, according to Lakeland Skate World owner Chanel Bellotto, who spoke with wuft.org. Bellotto said Florida liability insurance premiums for skating rinks run 30% to 40% higher than in other states, and another Florida rink owner, Chris Maganias, said his insurance rate hit $47,000 per location in April 2023.
Back in Albuquerque, Ballew previously said he was hopeful a local hero would swoop in to save the business and the jobs of its 30 employees, per abqjournal.com. For now, that hero arrived in the form of a year-long insurance policy, buying Skate-O-Mania time to keep the lights — and the disco ball — spinning while its owners search for something more permanent.
