This Year, Kirkwood's Holiday Season Has a Second Address in Kirkwood Park

The ice at the Kirkwood Community Center sits on top of an all-new cold floor. The city replaced the rink's whole cooling system this year. A new ammonia refrigeration plant took over from the old R-22 plant, which is being phased out nationwide. Crews also put in new underground piping, new dasher boards and glass, a new dehumidification system, and new rubber flooring around the rink and locker rooms. The rink opened in 1999, and this is its first holiday season since the rebuild.

Across Kirkwood Park, the lobby of the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center is getting ready for something else new. The first-ever Kirkwood Festival of Trees opens there on November 21. Downtown Kirkwood still hosts the Holiday Walk, Small Business Saturday and Holiday Cheer. This year, though, two of the season's new attractions are in the park, and the park sits close to those downtown blocks. The rink and the theater share the same grounds. Planning around that makes November and December easier.

The rink came back in August, on schedule

The rink closed for construction in late February and reopened on August 1. In its report on the reopening, the Webster-Kirkwood Times put the cost at $5.27 million, below the approved $5.54 million construction budget. Parks and Recreation Director Kyle Henke told the paper's reporters that programming at the rink "resumes unchanged from prior operation."

The same report noted that the rink finishes more than two years of construction at the Community Center, which included $11 million in earlier projects. The building serves an estimated 350,000 people a year. The Times also pointed out that the rink, an aquatic center and the theater all sit within Kirkwood Park. That makes the park itself the holiday destination this year.

What a public skate costs and when it runs

The Kirkwood Ice Arena page and the city's November 2026 schedule list these public session fees:

• Kirkwood residents: $6 for youth and adults, $5.50 for seniors 65 and up
• Nonresidents: $7 for youth and adults, $6.50 for seniors
• Skate rental: $3 for everyone

Resident pricing applies to people who live in Kirkwood or Glendale, and the rink asks for ID. Skate aids called buckets are handed out first come, first served, one per skater. They're generally for skaters 8 and under, and an adult should be with a child who is using one.

Most November weeks follow the same pattern. Sundays have a public session from 3:15 to 5:15 p.m. and Saturdays from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. On weekdays, midday sessions run from 12:15 to 1:45 p.m., and there's a late-afternoon session from 3:45 to 5:15 p.m. The weekend sessions are the easy ones for families to catch, and the midday weekday sessions suit anyone whose schedule has room in the middle of the day.

Thanksgiving week changes the pattern. The rink is closed on Thanksgiving Day, and public sessions are added from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. the day before and the day after. That week's calendar also shows an evening public session from 8 to 9:30 p.m. If you have family in town and kids out of school, the extra hours help.

For anyone thinking about lessons, Session 2 of the 2026-27 skating lessons runs seven weeks. Monday classes go from November 2 to December 14, Wednesday classes from November 4 to December 16, and Saturday classes from November 7 to December 19. Session 3 starts the week of January 4, 2027.

The Festival of Trees puts the holiday display inside the park

The Downtown Kirkwood Special Business District is putting on the Festival of Trees from November 21 to December 4 in the KPAC lobby at 210 E. Monroe Ave. Kirkwood-area businesses, organizations and community partners are decorating the trees and wreaths on display. Admission is free. You can buy $5 raffle tickets online for a chance to win a favorite tree or wreath, along with any gift cards and products that come with it. The drawing is Friday, December 4, at 2 p.m., and winners can take their displays home before the holidays.

The festival's two weeks line up with the rink's busiest stretch. From November 21 to December 4 you can see the trees and get in a public session on the same trip, without moving the car.

November 21 brings it all together

The opening day of the Festival of Trees is also the day of the Downtown Kirkwood Holiday Walk, billed as "Kirkwood's Holiday Walk & Santa's Arrival on the Train." The festival's kickoff is part of the Walk. Here's what's on the calendar that Saturday:

1. Downtown Kirkwood Holiday Walk. Santa arrives on the train. Check Downtown Kirkwood's event page for this year's schedule as the date gets closer.
2. Festival of Trees kickoff, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The KPAC lobby will have hot cocoa and coffee, and Santa visits from 1 to 2 p.m.
3. Public skate, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Kirkwood Ice Arena, the regular Saturday session.
4. Tree Lot & Gingerbread Shoppe opening day at The Summit at the Kirkwood Farmers' Market, 150 E. Argonne Dr. It stays open through Christmas Eve.
5. PINK'D, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the Ross Family Theatre at KPAC.

Santa's lobby visit overlaps the start of the skate session. If you want both, see Santa at 1 p.m. and walk over to the rink after that. The skate session runs until 3:30, and the festival lobby stays open until 4.

December spreads out, then lines up on the 12th

After opening weekend, the season gets quieter. Small Business Saturday on November 28 is the next downtown date. KPAC fills December with smaller shows, most of them in the Strauss Black Box Theatre. Saturday, December 12, is the busiest day of the month, both in Kirkwood and one town over.

The KPAC events calendar has tickets for its shows. The Coffee Concert Series runs on Tuesday mornings, so it's the one holiday program here that works for people who are free on weekday mornings.

Holiday Cheer fills downtown with carolers on December 12. That same afternoon, Webster Groves holds the first of its four Nutcracker on Ice shows. Metro Edge Figure Skating Club calls this year its 22nd performance. Online ticket sales have closed, and tickets are $25 at the door until they sell out, at the Webster Groves Ice Arena, 33 E. Glendale Rd. The show is paired with a canned-food drive for Operation Food Search. Last year the drive collected 2,346 pounds of food, enough to feed 586 people.

Webster's rink is also coming off a rebuild. The Webster-Kirkwood Times year-in-review reported that it reopened in October 2025 with a new ice sheet, new refrigeration equipment, a new cooling tower and new bleachers. So you could spend a December 12 morning with the carolers in Downtown Kirkwood and still make a matinee of a long-running skating show on another rebuilt rink less than a town away.

At Susan Hurley Homes, we keep up with the parts of Kirkwood that change from one season to the next, including a rink that came back on schedule and a new festival in the KPAC lobby. If you're weighing a move and want to talk about how Kirkwood fits your year, not just your square footage, we'd be glad to help. Request a Complimentary Consultation.