6 days Ago By Mike Nolan
The Glenwood Roller Rink has been closed due to structural damage, owners posted on social media. It was not immediately clear if the rink, 656 Holbrook Road, is permanently closed or just shut for repairs, and owners and representatives of the rink were not available for comment. The family also owns the Tinley Park Roller Rink and posted Friday on that rink’s Facebook page about the Glenwood facility’s closing.
Customers on social media said they hoped that repairs would be completed soon and the rink would reopen. The village of Glenwood had no hand in the move to close the roller rink, a village official said. Brian Mitchell, village administrator, said there had been “no action on the village’s part.
” The family has owned the Glenwood and Tinley Park Roller Rink, 17658 S. Oak Park Ave., since the 1960s, according to histories of the rinks posted at their websites.
One longtime patron of the Glenwood rink said on social media she had been skating there since she was 16 and is close to being 63. She said she had her first kiss at the rink and met her boyfriend there. She said structural damage, apparently from leaks, was nothing new and should have been addressed long ago.
“For years when it rains we skated around traffic cones and garbage cans because we love Glenwood,” she said. “To close the skating rink because of structural damage and no attempt to fix is a tragedy,” she wrote on the Tinley rink’s Facebook page. The one-level former square dance hall in Tinley Park was built in 1953 and converted in 1965 by skaters Ray and Margaret Quitter, parents of Carey Westberg-Quitter who continues to own and operate the Tinley rink and Glenwood business.
His mother died in November 2020. The family had previously owned the Markham Roller Rink. Along with operating the two rinks, Westberg-Quitter has produced movies such as the inspirational family film “My Lucky Elephant,” according to a previous Daily Southtown article.
The film is about a lonely boy who befriends an elephant that was shot in an elephant camp in Thailand. With its themes of respect, sharing and understanding, the movie was being used as a teaching tool in area schools, Westberg-Quitter told an interviewer..
