Ald. Jason Ervin (28) said during a Tuesday hearing that a new roller rink will “serve as a deterrent” to illegal drug trafficking on a busy West Garfield Park corridor.

City and state officials are hoping a new roller skating rink can succeed where hundreds of arrests have failed to break up an open-air drug market in one of the West Side’s busiest commercial districts.

The City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate voted unanimously during its meeting on Tuesday to let the Chicago Park District build a public roller rink on a 17,500-square-foot city-owned parking lot at 4004-12 W. Madison St., a strip Ald. Jason Ervin (28) called a “very challenged area” of West Garfield Park.