Harding Park kickball night raises funds for new skating rink

Harding Park turned into a summer kickball field on July 8 as Ferndale police officers, firefighters, city staff and residents met for the Rink Rollout Rally, a free community fundraiser aimed at financing a new inline skating rink. The event was built around a simple matchup, but the bigger target was clear: every inning was part of a campaign to replace a rink that Ferndale says has served the park for more than 50 years and can no longer be feasibly repaired.

The city set the rally for 6:00 p.m. at Harding Park and invited spectators to play, cheer from the sidelines or stop by for a popsicle and free swag. Donations were due by Friday, July 10, and the effort was tied to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Public Spaces Community Places program, which would match every donated dollar if the campaign reached its $62,500 goal. Ferndale’s pitch has been straightforward: raise the money locally, unlock the match, and move the rink project forward.

The planned facility is more ambitious than a like-for-like replacement. Ferndale describes it as a state-of-the-art, universally accessible and fully inclusive inline skating rink, with new sports flooring, accessible pathways, benches, trash and recycling bins, native landscaping and accessible parking spaces. The city has framed the project as both a recreation upgrade and a repair of long-standing park infrastructure, with the old rink having outlived the point where patchwork fixes can keep it going.

That urgency has been building for years. Ferndale secured a separate $100,000 Land and Water Conservation Fund grant in 2024 toward rink updates, and the total estimated project cost is $200,000. LaReina Wheeler, the city’s parks and recreation director, has said the old boards are no longer manufactured and that the rink has been kept operating with parts taken from decommissioned city rinks. Chris Woodside, a Parks and Recreation Board commissioner and rink user, has said he wants to see the space upgraded and hopes the new rink helps bring new events to Harding Park.

The kickball night made the fundraising pitch visible in a way a letter campaign or online appeal could not. By putting police, firefighters, staff and neighbors on the same field, Ferndale turned the rink effort into something residents could watch, join and measure in real time, a neighborhood sports night carrying the weight of a park project that still needs the money to get built.