HASSO HERING

From across the Eighth Avenue Canal, the former Skateway rink looked like this on Nov. 1, 2025.

Last Saturday the bike and I found ourselves on the paved path north of Albany’s Pacific Boulevard overpass, which made me wonder what if anything was new with the old Skateway roller rink across from the path on the Eighth Avenue Canal.

The old rink’s address is 725 Montgomery St. SE. I visited it in April 2024 when the property was for sale and the owner, David Kuntz, was just winding up a sale of items from the many decades when the rink was in business. You can look up the story here.

What’s new, to me anyway, is that according to Linn County records available online, Kuntz sold the building for $150,000 this past June.

The new owners are a couple from Troutdale. What do they have in mind for the 7,500-square-foot building? I don’t know but hope to find out.

In 2023, a roller derby team from Corvallis explored using the rink for training and practice, according to an entry in the city’s online listings of building and planning applications. But nothing came of it.

Last year, a social club considered acquiring the place but couldn’t meet the asking price ($200,000 at the time), and getting a conditional use permit from the city would have involved extensive renovations including a sprinkler system.

From across the canal, I could see Saturday that some work has started to fix part of the building’s exterior.

What made me stop on the path, though, was not the building across the way but the lively activities of a little flock of ducks in the creek, as you can see in the video below. (hh)