Entertainment & Amusement · 6 min read · Last updated
A roller skating rink is licensed as a place of amusement, and its checklist is about as short as Schedule 17 gets: four documents, no provincial device permits, no health certificate to chase down in advance. The scrutiny arrives afterwards instead, at the fire inspection, where the occupant load the inspector will accept becomes the ceiling on every public session you sell.
The City of Hamilton lists this under its “Establishments” category: “ROLLER SKATING RINK. By-law 07-170, Schedule 17. Please see By-law for DEFINITION, REQUIREMENTS and RESTRICTIONS.”
Who needs this licence?
If you run a roller skating rink as a business in Hamilton, you need this licence under Schedule 17 of By-law 07-170, which Licensing and By-law Services administers. It is a premises licence: what is being licensed is the place where the public comes to skate, together with the business running it. There is no threshold to cross the way there is in some neighbouring classes, where a count of machines or tables decides whether you are licensable. A rink is a rink from the first session you sell.
Schedule 17 is a wide net, and the sub-classes under it are not interchangeable. A bowling alley, a motor vehicle racetrack and a roller rink all sit in the same schedule, but each one has its own checklist, its own inspection set and, as you will see at renewal, its own timing. If you already hold a licence in another sub-class, do not assume this file will look like that one.
The by-law itself carries the definition of a roller skating rink along with the requirements and restrictions that attach to it, and it is worth reading if your operation sits near an edge. A community centre floor you book by the hour, a seasonal rink laid over another use, or a rink operated inside premises somebody else controls are all situations where the first question is who holds the premises and how those premises are already licensed.
What documents do you need?
Four items, and that is the whole checklist:
- A valid business registration, corporate profile or master business licence, dated within one year of your application.
- A Zoning Verification Certificate for the address, which is handled internally where the property is City-owned.
- Proof of liability insurance at no less than the minimum the checklist sets, in accordance with the Amusement Devices Act.
- A completed Certificate of Compliance application form.
Each of the four answers a different question. The registration says who is legally responsible. The zoning certificate says the use belongs at the address. The insurance says the risk is carried. The compliance form starts the inspection that confirms the premises meet the City's requirements. These attach to the City's business licence application, which you complete alongside them.
It is worth noticing what the City does not ask a rink for, because it tells you how this licence is scoped. There is no permit under the Amusement Devices Act and no device permit from the Technical Standards and Safety Authority: a skating floor is not an amusement device, and the Act appears on this checklist only as the standard your insurance is measured against. There is no certificate of inspection from the Medical Officer of Health either, which is exactly where this class parts company with the motor vehicle racetrack and the arcade in the same schedule. Neither is there a scaled premise plan. Four documents, and the building is assessed by inspection rather than on paper.
The item that most often sends a file back is the least interesting one. That one-year currency rule on the business registration is strict, and a registration pulled eighteen months ago will not do.
Zoning and premises requirements
A Zoning Verification Certificate is the City confirming in writing that a roller skating rink is a permitted use at your specific address. Zoning attaches to land, not to you, so the certificate is about the building you have chosen and nothing else.
This matters more for rinks than for most classes in the schedule, because of what the use physically needs. A skating floor wants a large clear span with no columns in the middle of it, and buildings like that are usually industrial or warehouse stock. Those zones frequently permit storage and manufacturing while treating places of public assembly as a separate matter altogether. The certificate is where that question gets a real answer instead of an optimistic one.
Where the same category of business held a licence at the address within the past year, a zoning addendum can be accepted in place of the full verification. That is the route for taking over a rink that is already trading. If the premises are City-owned, the verification is done internally rather than by you.
Parking obligations flow out of zoning, and there is a separate parking inspection on this licence. Work out early what a full public session actually demands of the lot, because a building sized for pallets and forklifts was never parked for a few hundred visitors arriving at once.
No scaled premise or plot plan appears on this checklist. That does not make your layout irrelevant; it means the City assesses it in person at inspection rather than from a drawing.
Inspections and approvals
Once your application is received, the Licensing team circulates the inspection requests. You do not book them individually.
The fire inspection is the one that defines this licence. A rink is a single large assembly space, and the fire inspection is where its occupant load gets settled, along with the exits, exit widths and exit signage that support it. That occupant load is not paperwork. It is the number of people you may legally have in the building, so it caps ticket sales for a busy Friday night session and it is worth knowing before you build a business plan around a target crowd. The perimeter counts too: the rental counter, the party rooms, the seating and the storage behind it all form part of the room being assessed.
The parking inspection checks the site's parking supply against what the use requires. Measure it against the peak session rather than a quiet weekday afternoon, because rinks fill and empty in blocks.
The Certificate of Compliance inspection assesses the premises against the City's compliance requirements and comes back on a cycle, described as bi-annual where the location is permanent.
There is no health inspection on this class at application, and no health certificate to bring with you. If you later add food service, that is dealt with through its own route rather than folded into this licence.
How much does it cost?
A new rink application is billed in four parts: a processing fee for handling the file, the annual licence fee itself, a fire inspection fee and a parking inspection fee.
Zoning verification, or the addendum where that route applies, is charged on its own line and only when it is required, which is why a straightforward takeover of an already-licensed rink can cost less to start than a first licence at a fresh address.
The Certificate of Compliance is not part of the licence total at all. It is quoted from the City's separate compliance fee structure, so budget for it as its own item.
HST applies to the processing fee and to both inspection fees. The annual licence fee is not taxed. A licence that lapses and has to be brought back carries a reinstatement fee, and HST applies to that as well.
Every municipal amount here is set by Council in the City's fee schedule and is confirmed by Licensing and By-law Services while your application is in progress, so treat the fee schedule current on the day you file as the authority rather than any figure quoted to you second-hand.
How to apply
Settle zoning before you commit to a building. For a use with this much floor-area appetite, a zoning answer that arrives after the lease is signed is not a paperwork problem, it is a business problem. Ask at the same time whether the addendum route is open to you, which it may well be if the address was licensed for the same category of business within the past year.
Pull a business registration, corporate profile or master business licence dated within the past year, and arrange liability insurance in the name of the entity that will actually hold the licence.
Complete the City's business licence application together with the Certificate of Compliance application form, submit them as one package with the zoning certificate and the insurance certificate attached, and pay the applicable fees.
The Licensing team then circulates the fire and parking inspection requests, with the compliance inspection following. Have the rink laid out the way it will genuinely operate before the fire inspector attends, including barriers, benches, the rental counter and any party room partitions, because occupant load is worked out from what is installed on the day rather than from what you intend to install later.
There is no requirement on this class to attend in person for a photograph or to carry a municipal photo identification card, which keeps the sequence simpler than the licences that attach to a named individual.
Renewals and staying compliant
The licence renews annually, and Declaration B is the form the City requires with each renewal of this class. Complete it every time; it is not a one-off from your first application.
The inspections do not repeat every year, and the pairing this class uses is worth committing to memory: the Certificate of Compliance inspection every two years, and the fire inspection every three. That is the reverse of the arrangement on the bowling alley class in the same schedule, where fire comes around on the shorter cycle. Operators who hold both licences get this backwards more often than you would expect, and the consequence is a renewal year budgeted at the wrong number.
In a year when neither inspection falls due, the renewal is the licence fee on its own. In a year when one does, the corresponding inspection fee is added on top.
Between renewals, treat physical change as a licensing matter. Adding mezzanine seating, enclosing a party room, moving the rental counter or reconfiguring the floor all shift occupant load and exit routes, which is precisely what the next fire inspection will be measuring. Raising it at renewal is far cheaper than having an inspector find it.
If the renewal date passes without payment, the file moves from renewal into reinstatement, which carries a reinstatement fee plus HST on top of the ordinary cost. There is no grace in the fee schedule for having been busy.
Quick quiz: test what you learned
Three questions, all answered in this guide. Click an answer to check it.
1. How often do the inspections repeat once a roller skating rink licence is being renewed?
This class pairs a two-year compliance cycle with a three-year fire cycle, which is the opposite pairing to the bowling alley class in the same schedule.
2. Does a roller skating rink applicant have to obtain a certificate of inspection approved by the Medical Officer of Health?
The roller skating rink checklist lists only a business registration, zoning verification, liability insurance and the Certificate of Compliance form; the Medical Officer of Health certificate belongs to classes such as the motor vehicle racetrack and the arcade.
3. Your rink floor is a large purpose-built surface. Does it need a permit under the Amusement Devices Act the way a ride does?
A skating floor is not an amusement device, so the rink checklist carries no Amusement Devices Act or Technical Standards and Safety Authority permit; the Act appears solely in the wording of the insurance requirement.
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Tell Permits2Go about your business and it assembles the licence application for you — document checklists, e-signatures and a guided workspace for Hamilton, with more cities on the way.
This guide is general information, not legal or professional advice. Licensing requirements, by-laws and fees change and vary by municipality — always confirm the current rules with the City before you apply.