Drive past North Walnut Street these days and the orange construction fencing is gone. So is the mud, the exposed conduit, the plywood walkway that routed foot traffic around the site for most of the past year. In its place: a fountain running, a pavilion standing, and a patch of downtown Howell that most residents have spent sixteen months mentally filing under "the future ice rink."
That filing is out of date. The Fire & Ice Depot District had its ribbon-cutting ceremony in July, and the part of the project everyone talks about, the glycol-chilled rink that draws skaters in January, won't matter again until temperatures drop below 50 degrees. Right now, in the last stretch of summer, the district is doing a completely different job than the one that made it famous. That's the part worth understanding before the season turns and everyone starts talking about it as an ice rink again.
From groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting
The timeline matters here because it explains why so many residents still think of this as a construction zone rather than a place to actually go. The city broke ground on April 16, 2025, with Mayor Bob Ellis and city council members on site for the ceremony. As recently as this past May, City Manager Kristi Troy was telling council the water feature and lighting had just gone in, grading and landscaping were underway, and crews were still pouring colored concrete ribbons through the gathering area. She mentioned the site had drawn a crowd at that weekend's Farmers Market even while still fenced off as an active construction zone.
Two months later, it was finished enough to cut a ribbon. Mayor Nikolas Hertrich and City Manager Kristi Troy stood in front of a crowd the city estimated at a few hundred people, with more than 160 RSVPs logged ahead of time. Hertrich told the local station it had been his goal for years to give the community a gathering place, and that day, watching the fountain run, he said it was finally real.
That's a fast turn from "active construction zone" to "ribbon-cutting" by public infrastructure standards, and it means a lot of Howell residents haven't caught up to the fact that the site is open at all.
What's finished, in specific terms
The district isn't a vague plaza. It has a defined shape, and knowing the pieces helps explain what it's actually good for this month versus what it will be good for in December.
- A 160-by-80-foot open-air pavilion that will house the ice rink in winter and function as flexible event space the rest of the year, with restrooms, concessions, lockers, and a rentable room built in
- Three fire pits arranged as an outdoor gathering space
- A playable, LED-lit interactive fountain, which the city has been careful to distinguish from a splash pad
- 43 dedicated public parking spaces inside the district itself, part of a larger parking push that adds more than 200 accessible spots to downtown Howell overall
- A revamped Summit Gardens park worked into the same footprint, with the whole gathering space arranged around the Historic Depot Museum
That fountain is the piece doing the actual work through late summer and into fall. It's designed to run through the warm months as an interactive water feature for kids and families, the same way the fire pits and pavilion seating are designed to run through the shoulder seasons before the rink goes down. The ice, when it eventually shows up, will be a 120-by-60-foot removable rink, glycol-chilled and only frozen when temperatures hold at 50 degrees or below. Free public skating for residents, an hourly fee for non-residents.
City Manager Kristi Troy described the intent at the ribbon-cutting plainly.
"This space will completely transform how we experience our community throughout the entire year, and this represents an investment in the long-term vitality of Howell."
That's the four-season framing the city has used from the start. What's easy to miss is that the four seasons don't arrive at once. The fountain's season is now. The rink's season is still months out.
Who paid for it, and why that matters for what happens next
The project carries roughly $2.75 million in outside funding: $750,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and $2 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation through its Public Spaces Initiative. The city recently received an additional $500,000 from the MEDC on top of that. According to city officials, the extra money doesn't expand the scope of the project. It reduces how much the city itself has to cover.
That distinction matters for anyone wondering whether the district will keep growing or whether this is the finished footprint. The scope, as built, is what residents are getting. There's no signal of a phase two attached to this funding, which means the pavilion, fountain, fire pits, and parking additions are the complete picture for now.
Parking is the other piece worth knowing before you plan a visit. The Parking Lot 10 project, which the city has been calling the Fire & Ice Lot at North Walnut and Wetmore Streets, is substantially complete and allows public parking for up to 48 hours of continuous use. That's a meaningful detail if you're planning to walk the district in the evening and grab dinner somewhere else downtown afterward rather than treating it as a quick in-and-out stop.
The businesses that stayed open through all of it
One detail from the construction period is easy to overlook now that the fencing is down. Walnut Street Marketplace stayed open through the entire build, including during the periods when the sidewalk in front of it was torn up for grading and concrete work. The city made a point of noting that customers could still get in and out with purchases the whole time.
That kind of continuity is part of why downtown Howell's broader numbers have held up. The city has pointed to more than 120,000 annual visitors to its downtown corridor, and Howell has been named "Best Main Street in America" by USA Today twice. A construction project of this size, running through a downtown that small, could easily have knocked a season's worth of foot traffic off nearby shops. Instead the district finished construction and opened directly into the same commercial strip it was built to support, with the businesses that anchor that strip still standing.
What this actually changes for the next few months
If you live in Howell, the practical takeaway is simple. The fountain is running now, through what's left of summer and into fall, and it's the version of this space worth visiting before the identity shifts back to ice and cold weather. The fire pits and pavilion seating work the same way in October as they will in January, just without the rink underneath them yet. And the parking improvements around North Walnut and Wetmore mean there's now a real reason to park once and walk the district rather than treating it as drive-by scenery on the way to somewhere else.
The rink will get its own moment once temperatures drop consistently below 50 degrees. Until then, the fountain, the fire pits, and the pavilion are the story, and most of downtown Howell hasn't updated its mental map to include them yet.
If you're weighing what a Howell address is worth day to day, not just on a listing sheet, this is exactly the kind of local shift that's easy to miss from outside the neighborhood and obvious once you've walked it. Benjamin DeRosa Realty Team works Howell block by block, and if you're thinking about buying, selling, or just want a neighbor's read on what's changing downtown, schedule your free home consultation and we'll walk you through it.
