It may look like a stretch of empty nothing next to Columbus high school.

But one 19-year-old girl has some big plans for it.

“It’s amazing the project has come this far,” said Elizabeth Blaser, the student who spearheaded the project.

“We’re actually standing on the footings now, which is really exciting. It’s covered in a fresh blanket of snow, but we’re hoping in a year from now, on a day like today, we’ll have skaters here.”

It was an idea she hatched five years ago as a Columbus high school junior.

Columbus’s first outdoor ice skating rink, right in her school’s back yard.

“Welcome to Columbus Ice, what has been my diamond clover 4H project,” Blaser said, “and something that the entire Columbus community has really embraced for many years now.”

While still a rookie skater herself, Elizabeth Blaser felt for years that some ice skating was exactly the venue Columbus needed.

“Back when my mom was a little girl, she told me that they used to ice skate at Pawnee Park,” Blaser said.

“Columbus is a growing community that offers so much to its members so why not give people something to do in the winter?”

And Columbus, through its contributions of money, labor, and materials to Blaser’s project, seems to strongly agree.

“When I say it’s mushroomed, it’s mushroomed into something great,” Blaser said.

“This project actually started as a $10,000 renovation, and now with labor donations, material donations, and monetary donations, it’s coming in at $120,000.”

The next phase of the plan is to get the warming hut finished before setting work on the ice itself which, when completed, will be the size of two regulation hockey rinks.

Blaser hopes to get prospective skaters twirling on the ice come the winter of 2021.