"This site and the park deserves design excellence, not just efficiency." George Cole, a member of the town's rink committee, said that in December 2025, as Brookline chose who would design the replacement for the Jack Kirrane Ice Skating Rink, Brookline.News reported.
Ten months later the design is well along. The architects are hired and three public design meetings have been held. A finished design is due in December 2026. The money to build it is the part with no date. Brookline has paid to plan a new rink at Larz Anderson Park, but it has not yet decided to pay for one. For now, every winter of skating up the hill still depends on refrigeration equipment that was supposed to be temporary.
The machine under the ice
The Kirrane rink has run on a temporary refrigeration system since 2019. Brookline.News reported in December 2025 that the system is expensive, and that town officials said it will not last much longer. That one detail shapes everything else in the project. The rink has been on a stopgap for seven seasons, and the replacement schedule is effectively a race against that equipment.
The town also argued for a long time about what should replace it. The Park and Recreation Commission first voted 4–3 for a covered rink. Then it reversed course and voted 4–3 for an uncovered outdoor rink, according to Brookline.News. The uncovered outdoor rink is the plan the town carried forward. The new rink is meant to stay what Larz Anderson's rink has always been, open ice under open sky.
What is being designed now
Once that question was settled, the work moved to the design table. In May 2025, Town Meeting took up a Community Preservation Act article recommending $1.68 million for the rink design and public design review. The money was split between $405,000 from the open space and recreation reserve and $1.275 million from the unallocated budget reserve, according to the Town Meeting warrant article.
The committee interviewed design firms in December 2025, with historic preservation listed as a top priority. Clara Batchelor, a landscape architect who chairs the Park and Recreation Commission, told Brookline.News, "We need someone who is very sensitive to the setting and the historic nature of it." Maryann Thompson Architects ranked first. By April 2026 the town had hired the firm, which has experience with both outdoor rinks and historic preservation, Brookline.News reported.
Since then, the Jack Kirrane Ice Rink Design Review Committee has met in public three times:
- June 22, 2026. The first public design meeting, held over Zoom, began collecting community input. The committee had toured the site on the morning of June 18.
- July 30, 2026. The second meeting reviewed concepts for the warming hut, the Brookline Record reported.
- September 16, 2026. The agenda called for votes on updates to the warming hut and Zamboni shed, the landscape entry sequence and ice rink improvements. It also listed discussion of the garden and rink-area landscape plans and of the rink's expenses and revenue.
That September agenda shows what a new rink at Larz Anderson involves beyond a sheet of ice. It covers how people arrive, where the Zamboni lives, how the rink sits within the park's garden landscape, and whether the operation pays for itself. Any new or renovated building must also comply with Brookline's Fossil Fuel Free Bylaw and its Climate Action Plan, according to the project's requirements as summarized by the Brookline Record.
The design budget is nearly untouched. The construction budget does not exist yet.
Design spending has barely started. The town's CPA project monitoring report dated October 14, 2026 lists the $1.68 million rink design award with 8% of its budget used, and it records the second public design meeting as held. Most of the design money is still ahead, and so are the decisions it will pay for.
Construction is a separate question. In April, Parks and Open Space Director Milee Pradhan said the funding to actually build the rink is uncertain and the town is exploring its options, Brookline.News reported. Brookline has three published cost figures, each from a different point in the process:
- $7 million: the total project cost in the town's October 2025 request for qualifications for design services
- $7 million to $8 million: the earlier feasibility study's estimate, as reported by Brookline.News in December 2025
- About $10 million: a figure town officials gave in May 2025, according to Brookline.News
Compared with the $1.68 million approved for design, building the rink would cost roughly four to six times as much. In early August, the Brookline Record reported that no public record it reviewed showed construction money allocated by Town Meeting or the Select Board. No construction start date has been published either, and no announcement says which winter, if any, the existing rink would close for work.
The calendar that decides the next few winters
The October 2025 RFQ set out a two-step schedule. Design is to be finished in December 2026, followed by a project presentation to Town Meeting in spring 2027. If that schedule holds, the real decision falls in spring 2027. That would be the first time a finished design and a construction price go before the body that controls the money.
So the rink's future, a rink of the same kind on the same hillside, has been settled for some time. The open question is timing: whether funding arrives before the temporary refrigeration gives out. Until a construction budget passes, each skating season runs on equipment that officials have already said is near the end of its life.
The rink has also drawn fresh attention this year. Brookline Interactive Group's documentary "Hidden Gem: The Story of Brookline's Kirrane Skating Rink" won two first-place awards at the 2026 Hometown Media Awards, the Brookline Record noted. For anyone who wants to follow the process, the town posts design review updates on the Larz Anderson Ice Rink Design project page. The committee's agenda also lists a fourth meeting as its next step.
Planning this winter's skate
For the 2026–27 season, Brookline Recreation is the source for opening news. In late October the rink's alert center showed no active alerts. Last winter gives a sense of the rhythm, though none of these figures are confirmed for this year:
- Opening: the 2025–26 season aimed to open Monday, December 8, 2025, depending on the weather
- Adult daily admission: $8 for residents and $10 for nonresidents, with reduced admission at $6 and $8, and free entry for children under 24 months
- Rentals and service: $8 skate rental and $12 sharpening
Last season's published public-skate schedules disagreed on Sunday hours. That alone is a reason to check the town's Jack Kirrane rink page and alert center before driving up the hill, rather than relying on a schedule copied elsewhere. On an outdoor rink with aging refrigeration, the alert center is also where a weather or equipment closure would appear.
December in Brookline already has dates set around the skating. ArtsBrookline's Brookline Village Holiday Market runs December 11–13 and December 19–20, 2026, starting with an opening reception on December 11 from 5 to 9 p.m. The Coolidge Corner Theatre is screening The Muppet Christmas Carol on December 19–20, Christmas in Connecticut on December 21 and Home Alone on December 26–27. The rink's own opening date will come from Brookline Recreation, and so will any notice that the old system needs a pause.
Public places like Larz Anderson are part of what gives a Brookline street its character, and I follow decisions like this one as closely as I follow the market. If you would like to talk through what the town's park and capital projects could mean for your own home, The Robin Allen Group is glad to help. Request a private consultation.
