Michael Ford of District Skate said he was on the understanding a new three-year lease of the rink on Industrial Road would commence this May, however owners of the property served them a termination letter last Thursday instead.

"Fourteen staff have now lost their jobs," Mr Ford said.

"I think they could have given us a heads up, surely they knew that they wanted to cancel the lease."

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Mr Ford said the closure would be "devastating" and had already been flooded with messages in support and punters giving them suggestions of where they could move to. However. he said setting up somewhere else would take quite some time.

"It was a bit of a surprise, we thought we'd stick on for as long as we could, we thought things were great," he said.

Lee Fanning, who co-owns the premises with husband Danny, said District Skate's three-year lease was coming to an end naturally and denied there were ever any discussions to extend.

"We have a fantastic new, exciting family entertainment facility coming which at the moment is hush, hush," Mrs Fanning said.

She said the new facility would hoped to be ready for the July school holidays, which may or may not be operated by themselves.

In the meantime, Mr Ford is frantically trying to cram as many of his prebooked birthday parties into the remaining few weekends District Skate will be open.

They will also be having a sale on all new skates and other hardware in the attached store. Their last day of trade will be May 5.

Prior to Mr Ford, the Fannings were owner/operators of the Oak Flats rink but closed it suddenly after an alleged homophobic incident in 2018.

Mr Ford took over the rink's operation with a three-year lease around a month later, and had instigated many new features in that time such as sensory, wheelchair and pram-friendly sessions.

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