Stillwater ice castle underway along the St. Croix River

This week’s frigid temperatures are good for something: building a shimmering ice castle in downtown Stillwater.

“It’s the perfect weather,” said Tim Bauman, site manager for Ice Castles LLC. “I’m wearing lots of wool thermal and a waterproof coat. It’s great. It’s better to work in the cold than the warm.”

Bauman and a dozen Ice Castles employees are at work in Lowell Park, just north of the Stillwater Lift Bridge. This is the second year an ice castle has been built in Stillwater; the Utah-based company previously built in Eden Prairie and at the Mall of America in Bloomington.

Bauman has become a specialist in ice architecture in his four years of working for Ice Castles in Minnesota; this is his first year as site manager.

Water lines, posts and lights were installed three weeks ago, but making ice had to wait until early Tuesday because seven days of forecast freezing temperatures are needed, Bauman said.

“We’re placing the icicles within the castle walls to create the structure and then spraying them with water,” he said.

To make the icicles, water is frozen in 3-foot-long PVC pipes, then the pipes are hoisted into vats of hot water. When the icicles pop out and float to the surface, they’re ready to be used.

Crews will harvest more than 10,000 icicles a day — by hand — and place them one at a time on the structure. The castle will need about 500,000 icicles in all, and eventually, the crew will grow to 20 to 25 employees.

It will take about 3½ weeks to build the structure, depending upon the weather, Bauman said.

Amanda Roseth, event manager for Ice Castles, expects it will open in early January and remain so through February.

“They’re saying that this year is modeling the weather of 1981, so it should be cold and snowy,” she said.

Roseth said they are expecting at least 100,000 visitors this season, including people who come to the Twin Cities for the Super Bowl.

More than 70,000 visitors toured the 2017 castle — even though the season was cut short by warm weather and rain.

This year’s castle will feature a new design, three slides, a walk-through wall, fountains and mazelike tunnels.

The 1-acre site is surrounded by the St. Croix River, the Lowell Park gazebo, a city parking lot, pine trees and a road. Ice Castles officials had explored moving the attraction to a larger location at Mulberry Point — where the Hockey Day Minnesota ice rink was built last year — but the ground was not stable enough, Roseth said.

“We’d like a bigger footprint because we’re very restricted down there, but it’s just such a great site, we have to make it work,” Roseth said.

Mayor Ted Kozlowski said the ice castle turned out to be a “phenomenal” tourist attraction.

“People love it,” he said. “The town was just so much more active every day of the week. It’s always nice to see people enjoying your town, especially in the winter. I was just down there, and you can already get a sense of how it’s going to look. It’s going to be awesome.”

Super Bowl LII will be played Feb. 4 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. In October, Winter Carnival organizers abandoned a planned ice palace on the grounds of the Capitol. They cited a lack of interest from would-be funders.

St. Paul’s loss will be Stillwater’s gain, said Robin Anthony, executive director of the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce.

“Hotels are already getting booked,” she said. “Since the St. Paul castle did not get sponsored, we anticipate many visitors during the Super Bowl. Downtown is ready.”

Stillwater is one of six North American cities hosting Ice Castles LLC this winter. The others are Midway, Utah; Lincoln, N.H.; Dillon, Colo.; Edmonton, Alberta; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Copyright 2017 Pioneer Press.