(Revisiting) A canal skateway in Georgetown, DC?

Rideau Canal, Ottawa.

A few years ago, Will Handsfield, then with the Georgetown BID, wrote a piece, "Could Georgetown’s C&O Canal become a winter skateway?," in Greater Greater Washington, about the possibility of a special winter use of the C&O Canal, as skateway, modeled after Ottawa, Ontario (and in a way, the Bentway, an under-freeway skateway in Toronto, "Under freeway ice skating track opens in Toronto").

Also see the Georgetown Metropolitan blog entry, "Skating on the canal is legal."

I and others commented, and the general consensus was that it is a cool idea, but because Washington tends to be relatively warm in the winter, it would be hard to pull off.

But as pointed out in "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc.," it's important to look more systematically, even without a pandemic ("Planning for winter outdoors in the wake of coronavirus"), at winter as a season and how to program it from a placemaking and activation standpoint.

Flickr photo by ermakov of the VDKNh ice rink in Moscow.

I saw an AP photo of the linear section of probably the largest ice skating rink in the world, in Moscow, which is part of the VDKNh--Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy--and is about 200,000 s.f., and organized into various different icescapes.

It made me realize like how I had to get over my thinking that we can only have large pedestrian districts or malls, modeled after Europe  ("Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?"), that instead we should be focused on starting small, with a block or two ("Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," "Planning urban design improvements at the neighborhood scale: Dupont Circle, DC" and "Revisiting pedestrianizing the 1500 block of 19th Street NW in Dupont Circle"), and work to extend that success over time, the same thing is true of a skateway on the C&O Canal. 

Yes, it will never be able to be like Ottawa's Rideau Canal which is much colder.  But it would still be cool, even much smaller. 

C&O Canal photo from Georgetown Metropolitan.

Start with one block, make it successful, and build out from there.

It would be great to implement such an initiative by pairing it with the wonderful winter Georgetown Glow outdoor light-based public art exhibition.

Although yes, there is already an ice rink at Georgetown's Washington Harbour development.