King's Skate Country Will Close Rosemont Location

Declining business has forced a local family to close one of its landmark roller rinks. Dan King, co-owner of King's Skate Country, said Wednesday the business's Rosemont location will shut its doors by the end of the month.

Luckily for Elk Grove residents, the original location on Franklin Blvd in Elk Grove, opened in 1948 by King’s father, Lester, will remain open.

The Rosemont rink, which has been in business for nearly 40 years, will hold its last day of skating on Feb. 26.

“I’m getting too old to run it anymore,” said King, 67, who lives in Elk Grove. “It’s been a tough business climate for the past two years.”

“Skating has its highs and its lows,” King said, adding that the last major popularity boom he can remember was in the 1980s.

Billy Schmidt, a manager at King's Skate Country's Elk Grove location, said business there remains strong, however.

"Right now we're doing very well," Schmidt said. "We typically slow down in the summertime, but we've been busy for the last four or five months, more than last year."

The closure of the Rosemont location will cost most of that rink’s 25 employees their jobs, but King said almost all of them are part-time employees.

He said the hardest part about the decision to shutter the Rosemont location was, “knowing that it’s going to be closed and we’re not going to see those people anymore.”

King recalled the story of a woman who came to the Rosemont rink earlier Wednesday to book a party for March. He said she was visibly saddened by the news, and moved up the date of her party.

“She said, ‘I grew up here. I want to cry,’ ” King said.

King grew up around skating, too. When he was only 3, he earned a nickel for each pair of roller skates he clamped onto customer’s shoes at the family’s Elk Grove roller rink. His parents ran the business and his grandparents worked in the snack bar. Today, Dan’s son helps him and his wife run the rinks.

The roller rinks' customers have also grown up with the Kings.

“We have people coming out as grandparents who used to come in as kids,” King said.

He said his family would be open to the possibility of someone else buying the Rosemont location.