Lately, Scott Campbell has taken note of what is, for him, a good sign: a recent resurgence in the popularity of roller skating.

The owner of Scooter’s Family Skating Center, a rink at 341 Shipyard Blvd. in Wilmington, Campbell said one reason for the uptick might be that the sport has received more attention on the national level in commercials aired on big networks. In February, a live Target commercial/music video during CBS’ airing of the Grammys featured Gwen Stefani in a skating scene, for one example.

“Technology has definitely changed what the kids do. Nowadays, too, more kids are involved in sports, playing soccer or gymnastics or stuff that keeps kids from skating as much. But I will say over the past several years, skating is trending back again,” Campbell said.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Campbell is seeing numbers like those counted in roller skating’s 1970s and ’80s heydays, when teens and preteens spent hours circling wooden floors under disco balls to tunes like Hey Ricky by Melissa Manchester and spun themselves around to the Hokey Pokey.

Now those youngsters have youngsters themselves, and a staple of Campbell’s business these days, fueled mainly by word-of-mouth, is birthday parties for the offspring of those who skated in their youth.

“If I don’t mark it off in the book not to book one, I usually have one every single day. Every single day, there’s a birthday party here,” he said.

For Wilmington resident Kara Kenan, who has a 7-year-old daughter named Charlotte, Scooter’s has been a go-to venue.

“Scooter’s is always at the top of our list for birthday parties. Charlotte feels like a star with her name up on the big screen and fun lighting. They’re willing to tailor the music selection and games to her tastes,” Kenan said.

She said Scooter’s is a venue where the price is reasonable for a large number of guests. Her family has hosted two birthday parties there and attended many more.

“We’ve always been pleased with their support, and we’ve always had fun,” Kenan said.

Private birthday parties, where customers have the rink to themselves for two hours and can invite up to 50 people, cost $175 Monday through Thursday and $225 on Friday through Sunday.

“The private parties are booked right now all the way through Christmas,” Campbell said.

Campbell also offers birthday parties during public skating sessions Friday through Sunday. Every year, one of GE’s divisions holds a Christmas party at Scooter’s.

About four years ago, Campbell started allowing kids to bring actual scooters to ride around the rink at certain times, and bikes during private parties, a way to engage children who might not want to try skates and soothe the fears of parents worried about their kids falling.

Campbell said some skating rinks have added other kinds of entertainment, such as laser tag, to their venues to increase profits, but the age of his 12,500-square-foot building and current codes wouldn’t allow a major expansion at Scooter’s.

Campbell’s business has weathered the ups and downs of the sport. He said a lot of rinks were hit hard or had to shut down in the late 1980s because the cost to insure them skyrocketed or they couldn’t get insurance at all.

Campbell said he couldn’t sleep at night if he didn’t have liability insurance, which a rink operators association negotiates.

“Now the property insurance is way more expensive than the liability insurance,” he said, because of the threat of hurricanes the Wilmington area faces each year.

Roller skating dates back nearly 300 years, to when the first recorded use of roller skates took place on a London stage in 1743, according to the National Museum of Roller Skating. James L. Plimpton patented a four-wheeled roller skate in 1863.

Scooter’s was built in 1959 by Bud Parmenter, who knocked down houses to make way for the rink because he loved the sport, Campbell said. The Carter family owned the rink before Campbell and his partner, Bill Eschert, bought the business in 1999. Eschert had owned the rink now known as Jellybeans at 5216 Oleander Drive, and Campbell had worked there before he and Eschert took over Scooter’s.

Now Campbell is the sole owner of Scooter’s, which brings in about $200,000 to $250,000 a year, he said. Campbell puts a lot of that money back into making repairs and improvements. He has replaced the roof, the ceiling and the air conditioning and heating systems, and replaces the brightly-colored, modern-patterned carpet every few years.

“Profit-wise, I’m not going to make a million dollars, but I make a good living here, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the kids. It pays the bills,” Campbell said.

The wooden floor of the rink has to be resurfaced every now and then, he said, but the sound system is essentially the same aside from the addition of some bass speakers.

“I can’t replace it with anything better,” said Campbell, a former wedding DJ who, instead of contracting with a subscription service for music, provides the music at Scooter’s himself.

He said his busy times are seasonal. These days, when the sun sets earlier and temperatures are cooler, he gets more customers. There’s also a spike in the summer, Campbell said, when camps head to Scooter’s for field trips.

“The overhead is low enough to where I can absorb it if I have a slow couple of months,” he said.

He hopes to get more customers as people buy homes in a new master planned community, RiverLights, under construction on River Road not far from the rink.

“That’s going to increase my traffic flow of people driving by here to go home,” he said.

In eight years, when the mortgage on Scooter’s is paid off, the 42-yearold Campbell might consider selling the property and retiring. But for now, he’s enjoying introducing more kids to the sport.

“For the past several years,” he said, “every year has been better than the year before.”