Winter Carnival will have a seven-story ice palace, after all

Though plans for a massive, record-breaking ice palace for the 2018 St. Paul Winter Carnival melted a couple of months ago when the millions of dollars needed to build it couldn’t be raised, organizers announced Thursday that a “People’s Ice Palace” will be built in Rice Park.

A free, seven-story ice palace will be part of the annual winter celebration, which will be extended an extra week (Jan. 25-Feb. 10) to coincide with Super Bowl festivities in Minneapolis.

Plans had originally focused on building an enormous ice palace on the State Capitol grounds, and when that didn’t work out, carnival supporters said they continued to look at other options. Dan Stoltz, chairperson of the committee working on the palace, said it was significant to announce the cold castle construction on the first day of winter.

“We had one mission,” Stoltz said, “to create a spectacle that would be free and family-friendly.”

The People’s Ice Palace will be built on the south side of the park and be connected to other ice structures and the ice carvings that are a traditional part of the annual Winter Carnival. Visitors will not be able to walk through the ice palace, which will feature lights, sound and six towers – one for each of the Winter Carnival legend figures: King Boreas, Queen Aurora and the princes of the four winds.

People looking for a way to be part of the People’s Ice Palace can “buy a block.” Prices start at $25 and the sponsorships are available at wintercarnival.com, said Jennifer Tamburo, chairperson of the Saint Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation.

The ice palace will require 4,000 blocks of ice that will be cut from Green Lake in Spicer, Minn., Stoltz said. The blocks will be transported to St. Paul on flatbed trucks. Construction is expected to start Jan. 3 and the ice palace is slated to open Jan. 25.

The People’s Ice Palace was designed by the Cunningham Group, which has designed the last two ice palaces for the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The last major walk-through ice palace was built in 2004 near Xcel Energy Center. An ice palace constructed to coincide with the Super Bowl in Minneapolis in 1992 drew 2 million visitors to Harriet Island. Its record height — 166 feet — made it memorable, but so did its price tag. Construction, lighting, security and other costs associated with the 1992 ice palace totaled $1.9 million — twice as much as estimated. These bills drove the St. Paul Winter Carnival Association out of business, nearly sinking the festival, which celebrates its 132nd year in 2018.

The 17-day Carnival will have more than four dozen events and several new attractions beyond the ice palace. Most events are free, open to the public and will take place in downtown St. Paul, near Rice Park and the Landmark Center, as well as at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

Copyright 2017 Pioneer Press.