Biggby Coffee Ice Cube – Ann Arbor

• 2121 Oak Valley Drive
• Ann Arbor, MI 48103
• (734) 213-1600
• Website

Sometimes, Ann Arbor feels like a second home to us. It seems like we spend a lot of time there skating either for competitions, tests, or practices.

Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor are kind of intertwined when it comes to skating. A lot of the coaches work together, a lot of the skaters are friends despite being competitors, and both clubs have a large number of skaters that do the National Solo Dance Series so we see each other a lot.

Now, it is true I wrote a blog post just a couple of years ago about this ice rink but the ownership and name has changed since then and it bothers me when I link back to it so I’m doing it again. There are some other upgrades as well but we’ll get to those in those blog post and one a couple of posts from now.

The Biggby Coffee Ice Cube – Ann Arbor is on Oak Valley Drive south of Scio Church Road in Pittsfield Charter Township on the southwest side of Ann Arbor. The three rink facility opened in 1995 and became the Biggby Coffee Ice Cube last year along with rinks owned by Black Bear Sports in East Lansing and Brighton.

You come in to the arena above ice level. There’s a large lobby area with tables once you get passed the main entrance hallway. This is where we spend a majority of the weekend. We get there early and claim a table so we have a place to sit outside of the cold ice rinks. Solo dance is unique in that each skater has two skates and they’re usually in the same day. Sometimes with several hours in between. So, each of my kids had two skates in the morning on Thursday and then we had to come back for an 8:00 skate for L Thursday night. Having some place to put our stuff down and hang out with teammates and other parents is huge for competitions like this.

One of the big changes to the arena is that concession stand you see in the background of the above picture. It’s not your typical ballpark concession stand. Because of that, I had to give Chop Detroit it’s own blog post. There’s way more to it than I could say here.

When you’re standing in that lobby area, there is a large rink off to the right known as the Paul R. Helber Stadium Rink. This is one of the two NHL sized rinks in the Ice Cube. There three entrances through glass doors that take you from the lobby area to the top of the seating in the rink. The rink was named after a longtime hockey coach and referee in 2022.

Stadium Rink is the main hockey rink. For figure skating competitions, it’s used as the freestyle rink. B got to skate here Friday evening when he did his free skate. We also spent a lot of time in the rink watching older boys including the reigning US Men’s Junior National Champion Lorenzo Elano who was competing in Junior Men’s division.

The seating is mostly on the side you walk in to. It’s all molded plastic seats mounted on concrete. There are heaters that weren’t turned on most of the time but it was still comfortable without a coat most of the time. For bigger competitions (like the Porter Synchronized Skating Classic) there are some metal bleachers in the corners that can also be used for seating. These aren’t available and aren’t needed during Springtime.

Back to the lobby. There’s a hockey shop right in the middle. Perani’s Hockey World has 20 stores in six states. Most of them are in Michigan including stores in Portage (maybe? It lists an address by Sam’s Club but I’ve never seen it) and Grand Rapids.

There is a hallway on other side of Perani’s and each hallway leads to a different rink.

The hallway to the right goes to Olympic Rink where we spend the majority of our weekend.

Olympic Rink gets it’s name from being an Olympic sized rink. I always wonder if this trips up our skaters because the Olympic rink is wider than an NHL rink. Wings West used to have an Olympic sized rink (Red Rink…you can still see the outline of it) but now both rinks are NHL size. My daughter says it doesn’t and she actually likes the bigger rink but of all the places we go, this is the only Olympic size rink the kids skate on. Luckily, they’ve both skated on it multiple times for several different disciplines so they’re comfortable in there now.

Olympic Rink is the figure skating rink. AAFSC has their locker room in the rink and all of the banners from national qualifiers, world qualifiers, Olympic champions and Hockettes synchro hang in the Olympic rink.

There are also flags from various countries in the rafters and an Olympic flag hanging on one end.

If you continue the loop around the corner from Olympic Rink, you’ll find Med Sport Physical Therapy. L’s had to deal with some knee injuries in the past. This would have been an amazing thing to have at the rink.

The third rink is also an NHL sized rink. It’s called Varsity Rink and getting to it is a little trickier. There’s a door that leads in to the rink…

…but it’s only to a balcony overlooking the rink. You have to go downstairs to get in to Varsity Rink and there’s not much seating. This is used as a practice rink for figure skating competitions. This rink is mainly used for the lower levels of youth hockey. You can actually stand in the hallway upstairs and look down through the glass to watch what’s going on without having to go downstairs. Also has the added advantage of staying warm because Varsity Rink is pretty cold.

Downstairs there’s another huge area. Several locker rooms and another huge public lobby.

If you do public skate here, this is where you’d go. There’s a window in the wall near the entrance to Stadium Rink for public skate skate rentals.

A really, really cool feature I found while I was taking B to the bathroom to change costumes is the ballet room. What an amazing idea for figure skaters. Like I mentioned earlier, B was really excited to watch Lorenzo Elano skate and one of the things Renzo told him when they were talking later in the evening is how important ballet is to skating. B very much wants us to sign him up for ballet classes now. Having that option at the rink would be amazing.

There’s also a very cool strength training room that is used for both hockey and figure skating. We have something similar at Wings West with Athletic Mentors which L does three times a week and loves it.

The Biggby Coffee Ice Cube – Ann Arbor is one of those rinks we spend quite a bit of time at. This past weekend was great. The kids made a lot of new friends with kids they compete against. They’re all kids they’ve known but there was a lot of waiting so they ended up hanging out together.

Neither of the kids is doing synchronized skating this year so we won’t be back in December and we’re already talking about skipping this competition next year to go to one in DC the week before so who knows when we’ll be back. This is definitely one of the nicer rinks we go to just because they have so much space and the competition is always run really well.