Artist Terrence Fogarty hopes one day his images on the giant mural going up at Sixth and Cedar streets in downtown St. Paul reflect the faces skating inside that building.
The building, which Macy’s abandoned five years ago, is being retrofitted with an ice rink on the top floor and office and retail space below. Walgreens has already moved in on the Wabasha Street side of the block-long building, and the Minnesota Wild are expected to begin practicing on the top floor Tria Rink next month.
Fogarty’s mural, 300 by 50 feet, began going up on the building, now called the Treasure Island Center, last week. The first four panels are the faces of three young hockey players. He wanted an ethnic mix, he says. And he wanted a girl in the image.
Youth hockey needs to become more diverse, says Fogarty, who graduated from Johnson High School in St. Paul. It’s thriving in the suburbs and outstate, but dwindling in the metro. He says the East Side is no longer “Johnsons, Olsons and Andersons” as it was when he grew up there.
It’s a tough sport for kids to get into, he adds. “To play soccer, you just get a ball and go out in a field,” Fogarty says. Hockey requires special equipment and ice time.
The artist’s hopes for hockey mesh with an initiative to get inner city hockey clubs on the Tria Rink. The Wild and Hamline University will use just a fraction of the ice time, said Andrea Novak, senior vice president for marketing and public relations for the St. Paul Port Authority, which was a major player in the building’s redevelopment. Tria Rink will have 5,000 hours of ice time open for the public.
Equity on Ice is a program raising money to give ice time and office space to city youth hockey groups DynoMights, St. Paul Police Athletic League and Friends of St. Paul Hockey, Novak says. Equity on Ice will have its first fundraiser, which will give the public a chance to skate on Tria Rink, on the Wednesday before the Super Bowl.
Tria Rink “is in the inner city, so inner city kids should have a chance to skate there,” Novak says. Equity on Ice is run by Capital City Properties, the nonprofit arm of the St. Paul Port Authority.
“The community demographic is changing,” she adds. “We want to see the hockey demographic changing, too.”
That change is evident in a big way on the outside of the building. Fogarty’s mural “is an intro to and matches what we’re doing on the inside,” Novak says.
The artist says he started working on the images for the murals last spring. His paintings were about 60 by 20 inches. The kids in the first four panels are real hockey-playing kids, Fogarty says. The girl on the far left is from White Bear Lake and plays with White Bear Lake youth hockey, the boy in the middle plays for Bloomington-Kennedy youth hockey and the boy on the right plays hockey on a Shakopee youth team.
The next scene on the mural, which will stretch around the corner and about two-thirds of the way down the building on Cedar, features a youth hockey team meeting with its coach. The last scene focuses on pond hockey, Fogarty says.
Fogarty’s work is familiar to Minnesota hockey fans on a smaller scale. He’s been creating the cover art for the state high school hockey tournament programs since 1998.
IF YOU GO
- What: Equity on Ice fundraising event
- When: 6:30-9 p.m. Jan. 31
- Where: Tria Rink, 400 N. Wabasha St., St. Paul
- Tickets: $25; equityonice.org
- Info: Skate on the Wild practice ice, interact with players and get photos with the Wild mascot, Nordy. There will be games and concessions.
