End of the Six-Year Ice Follies

New York City's Central Park last week looked like an autumn painting, framed in leaves of russet and gold and brushed with soft sunlight. In the shadow of Manhattan's skyline, workers bustled around the Wollman Memorial Rink. One crew hoisted lights for night skating, while another busily polished rest stands for skaters. Someone at the controls of the music system surrendered to an impulse and played the Skater's Waltz. Said Jogger Susan Dorrity, who stopped to watch the activity: "I can't believe it's done."

Nor can many others. Closed in 1980 for repairs, the rink over the next six years became a paradigm of the fouled-up city construction project, complete with horror stories of bureaucratic fumbling and outrageous expense. Not until last July, when New York Real Estate Mogul Donald Trump, 40, whose fortune has been estimated at upwards of a billion dollars, took over the job of rebuilding the 33,000-sq.-ft. rink, did Wollman show signs of being completed in time for the 1986-87 skating season. Trump offered Mayor Edward Koch a deal: let him have a crack at the job, and if the city was not satisfied with his work, it wouldn't pay him. "Basically the city didn't know how to build a skating rink, and I felt we could do the job," said Trump. "I told them I'll pick up the tab, and when I'm finished and you find that you still can't open, I won't expect a penny."

Trump kept his part of the bargain: he completed the rink in 3 1/2 months instead of the six he had said he would need, and for $750,000 less than his $2.9 million budget. Though the publicity-conscious Trump had much at stake in finishing the rink quickly, his rescue effort nonetheless is a revealing example of how a private developer, unfettered by the myriad regulations that bedevil local government, can execute projects with dispatch. "Donald Trump did a terrific job," said Koch last week. "We have many legal constraints on us not applicable to the private sector that often make it difficult to do things as efficiently as we would like to."

A better way certainly seemed in order. Opened in 1950 as a gift to the city from Kate Wollman, a banking heiress, the rink quickly became the favorite spot for tens of thousands of skaters to do their twirls (and spills) and sip hot cocoa on a wintry afternoon. In 1980 the city closed Wollman for renovations, which were expected to take no longer than two years. The city originally estimated that the repair bill would total $9 million, but it eventually reached $12 million without a cube of ice to show for it. The roof of the pavilion, which houses the changing rooms and restaurant, was riddled with holes and made a perfect sieve. The ice-making equipment could not do its job because its 22 miles of refrigeration pipes had sprung dozens of leaks, a disaster that was not discovered until after concrete had been poured. The pipes were further damaged as workmen chopped up the concrete to make repairs. The rink's floor was also badly slanted, causing water to accumulate at one end.