People have been wondering what's to become of the Southgate Skating Rink.

The 85-year-old White Center landmark closed in midsummer after a suspicious fire in a storage lot next door scorched the south wall of the building.

Rink owner Tom Brown said his family decided to temporarily close the skating rink after the blaze. Although the structure took $2,500 worth of fire and smoke damage, the skating rink faced an even bigger problem.

"People are not skating as much," Brown said. The days of skating to disco music are long gone. "There's sparse usage of these big facilities."

Southgate Skating Rink had been attracting new attention the last couple of years from people wanting to see the Rat City Rollergirls compete. It's an all-female roller-derby league of four teams that held "bouts" at the Southgate Rink. But since the closure, the Rat City Rollergirls finished their season inside Hanger 30 in Magnuson Park at Sandpoint.

Meanwhile the insurance bills for the skating rink kept coming, Brown said.

"We're looking at what our options are," he said. "We need to figure out how to make a big building like this make money."

The barrel-roof structure that houses the skating rink was constructed in 1920. White Center Arena, as it was called then, was a boxing venue.

The owner was a man named Hiram Green. He built a sawmill on the pond in what is now White Center Heights Park just south of White Center Heights Elementary School. In the late 1920s, Green built the building where the Triangle Tavern is today, between 16th Avenue and Delridge Way at Roxbury Street.

Besides boxing at the White Center Arena, the West Seattle Athletic Club sponsored wrestling matches there in the 1930s.

After Hiram Green's death, his daughter Ethel and her husband, William "Pop" Brown, turned the arena into a dance hall in 1934. Orchestras kept the place jumping on weekends.

The Browns converted the building again in 1937, this time into the Southgate Rollerdrome. Pop Brown became co-founder and four-year president of the U.S. Roller Skating Association.

Skating continued into the 1940s and '50s. The rink was remodeled in 1948.

Skating instructors Art and Fran Russell took over in 1950, and another remodel was done in 1956. The Russells ran the place for two decades until 1971, when the Brown's daughter, Dorothy Tamaccio, assumed management.

Another makeover was done and this time the main entrance to the skating rink was moved from 16th Avenue to the parking lot on 17th Avenue. Tamaccio headed the business for the next two decades.

The July 27 fire next door to the Southgate Skating Rink was determined to be the result of arson, stated a North Highline Fire Department report. Gasoline had been spread just inside the door of a trailer parked in the narrow storage lot next door to the Southgate Skating Rink.

Two motor homes also were damaged in the blaze, which was about 1 foot away from the south wall of the rink. The report noted that people had been living in the motor homes, trailer and a construction shack on the property at the time of the fire.

The arson case remains open, said an official at the King County Fire Investigations Unit. Meanwhile the owners of the Southgate Skating Rink will continue to weigh their options for the future of the building.

Tim St. Clair can be contacted at 932-0300 or tstclair@robinsonnews.com