OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — After 73 years of skating, Skate Daze owner Scott Cernik says it's time to hang up the skates.
"When I was a little kid, I helped clean the place up," Cernik said. "I could barely see over the counter and hand skates out. I've basically been in the business all my life."
Skate Daze will turn off its lights for good at the end of March 31. Midwest Laboratories bought the building to turn it into its new headquarters.
Cernik says the offer was too good to pass up after a prior deal fell through last year.
"We said we weren't interested," Cernik said. "Then it went back and forth multiple times until it was an offer we couldn't refuse."
"With all the facilities we've operated over the decades, we never had an offer where somebody made the kind of an offer that made us stand back."
For anyone looking to buy one skating rink, a couple of arcade games, bumper cars or prizes, Cernik wants to help you out.
"We get to keep the equipment and sell it to somebody," Cernik said. "So someone can build, or find, a building to put a skating rink in which we would help start. you got everything you need for a skating rink."
Until then, Skate Daze will keep gliding until its final day.
"We're going to pursue some other interests," Cernik said of his family, who's been in the business since his father started in the 1940s. "A lot of it is visiting friends of ours in the skating industry that we've developed who are all over the country."
