Plymouth's 1972 city ice arena, the first in Michigan to run on a geothermal system.
Collection credit: Photo: Antony-22 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Plymouth Cultural Center opened in 1972 as a city building that houses an ice rink alongside meeting rooms, banquet rooms and the recreation department's offices. When the system original to the 1972 building wore out, the city commission replaced it with a $1.1 million geothermal plant paid for from the general fund, making this the first geothermal ice arena in Michigan. Steve Anderson, the city's recreation director, reported the September gas bill falling to roughly a fifth of what it had been in 2008 and 2009.
Anderson also credited the system with better skating conditions. Water laid at 140 degrees snap-freezes in 30 to 40 seconds, which gives a faster surface where the puck will not hit water; hockey, in his words, likes hard, fast ice with no standing water.
The Plymouth Hockey Association, a youth program that has served the community since 1964, calls the Cultural Center its home ice. As of September 2026 the Michigan Ice Dogs, a junior team that played out of Farmington Hills Ice Arena in 2012-13, are based here in the Great Lakes Junior Hockey League's East Division, and the city runs its own open skate and freestyle sessions on the same sheet.
Admission, rentals and arrival details, researched from official rink information. Source checks stay current for 30 days.
Open skate fees per session: adults $5.00; under 16 & over 55 $4.00. Freestyle skating drop-in (Thursdays, intermediate and advanced skaters) is $15.00 for 50 minutes of ice time, plus $7.50 for an additional 30 minutes that day.
Source checked · · Official source
Skate rental is $2.00.
Source checked · · Official source
A source check records what the rink published on that date. Session-specific booking details take precedence.
