Ice Castles Coming to Maple Grove: What You Need To Know
Utah-based Ice Castles is moving its Minnesota presence from New Brighton to Maple Grove this winter, as first reported by CCX News.
This week, CCX News spoke to Greg Anzelc and Anne Anderson from Experience Maple Grove, the city’s official destination marketing organization, about what this will mean for Maple Grove.
Q) CCX News: What are the Ice Castles?
A) Greg Anzelc, Experience Maple Grove Executive Director:
The ice castles are a winter wonderland that is going be created right here outside of Life Time Fitness in Maple Grove. It’s a Utah-based company that has four locations throughout the United States, Minnesota and specifically Maple Grove was selected after some lengthy conversations over the summer. Some of the main criteria for selecting Maple Grove was the city-owned lot right here in front of Life Time Fitness, which has ample parking with the city/county parking ramp right in front of the library, as well as access to water. There’s about 15 million gallons of water that are going to go into freezing this ice castle. As well as, that has to drain somewhere in the spring. So we have ample drainage on this lot. So we’re really excited about having a feature lot where people in and around Maple Grove can really see the construction happening over the next couple months as well as the winter wonderland that will be created staring in mid-December.
Q) What will this Ice Castles experience be like?
A) Anne Anderson, general manager of Experience Maple Grove:
Beside the ice castle itself, inside the structure there will be things like a tubing hill, ice slides, tunnels, an ice bar, local food trucks and shopping opportunities, to really give those that come to the ice castle a real winter wonderland experience.
Once temperatures are consistently in the teens, the ice castles will be built on a plot of city-owned land at the intersection of Weaver Lake Road and Main Street in Maple Grove.
Q) What economic impact will this have on Maple Grove?
A) Anzelc:
As a destination marketing organization for Maple Grove, we’re especially excited about that economic impact. As Anne mentioned, there’s going to be a lot happening inside that ice castle. We’re going to have some food trucks in there. There’s going to be an ice bar in the ice castle which will involve all local Maple Grove-based restaurants and food trucks inside the ice castle. We’re expecting an economic impact between the ticket sales and surrounding benefit to our local restaurants, and our shopping and our dining, well north of $3 million between the months of December and February. So we’re especially excited about that. And, of course, you know when people come to Maple Grove, we want it to be a day experience and even a stay-cation for our local residents who can partner with our local hoteliers on ticket packages that we’re working with those hotels about, as well as, you know just spending the day as well as the night in Maple Grove; or the weekend in Maple Grove, and making the ice castle the center of that experience. But of course right down the road, just a short walk down Lakeview Drive we have our Central Park, which has the super popular winter skating loop as well as snowshoeing here over the winter. As well as shopping and dining on Main Street. So we’re super excited about the economic impact.
Q) How can people find out more information?
A) Anderson:
So for ticket sales go to icecastles.com and any other information go to Experience Maple Grove like Greg said to get your full experience for this winter.
Related: Winter Wonder: Large Ice Castle Attraction Coming to Maple Grove
