A friend of mine posted this inspiring photo on Facebook (thanks KJ). It’s a photo of people sitting out in a cafe-style setting on a canal in Leiden, a Dutch province of South Holland. When I was young I spent a lot of winters skating on Lake George in the Adirondacks. Since the lake was smaller and shallower than Lake Erie, the ice would always freeze in a similar way… smooth as glass.
When the ECHDC builds the extended faux canal in time for ice skating next winter, I would imagine that the ice conditions would be very similar to the conditions seen in this photo. Now take a look at the simplicity of this ice cafe concept. This is a zero cost feature that consists of a couple of tables and a few chairs. Brilliant!
You want to get people down to the waterfront in the wintertime? The skating offers people something to do and watch. The canal walls offer protection from the wind. The last piece of the puzzle is to give visitors an outdoors experience that they will never forget. And if, for some reason, it doesn’t work… then no big deal because it didn’t cost anything to begin with.
We need to remember that “The simple things in life are free.”