No roller rink at Mosaic District this year, but ice skating may be planned

The Mosaic District roller skating rink won’t come back this year, but the development is still holding out hope for ice skating in the future.

Rink Management Services Corporation, which operates Mosaic Skateland, has decided it won’t “be doing any roller skating during this warm weather season,” Fairfax County’s planning staff told the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) at a Feb. 1 meeting.

With no roller skating planned for this summer, the company asked the BZA for another continuance of the public hearing on its request for a special permit that would allow roller skating and ice skating on a seasonal basis in the Merrifield neighborhood.

“They’re reevaluating their plans for perhaps next winter,” staff coordinator Brandon McCadden told the BZA. “At this point, they’ve asked to continue later into the spring to give them time to work on their plans for a winter ice event that would occur starting next November, December.”

A decision on the case has now been postponed four times after the board unanimously agreed to grant the continuance.

EDENS, the property owner and developer behind the Mosaic District, didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Mosaic Skateland was introduced in June 2021 with a launch event tied into LGBTQ Pride Month. The temporary roller rink returned in a different location by Barnes & Noble last year.

The developer and Rink Management Services filed for a special permit from the county last April, proposing that the roller rink become a regular pop-up every spring and that an ice rink be added during the winter months.

However, Mosaic residents took issue with the proposed facilities at a July 13 public hearing, worrying about the potential noise and traffic impacts, and the BZA later criticized the applicant’s public outreach efforts as lacking.

County staff indicated at an Oct. 19 meeting that the rink proposal will likely be “substantially” different when it next goes before the board.

At last month’s meeting, McCadden noted that the county may get updates before June, but for now, the case won’t return to the BZA until June 14.