How to Get a Skatepark in Your Community

Skateboarding has become one of the most popular extreme sports for kids today. Give a kid a board and he'll skate anywhere. Sometimes skating anywhere can lead to trouble with local authorities. When kids skate they look for challenging pieces of architecture to grind, slide, and flip from such as park benches, loading docks, handrails, etc. Part of the problem is the skaters deface the property by waxing the edges of ledges and handrails and grinding on them. There are also safety issues and hazards for kids skating in these public areas. Many towns and cities do not offer a safe place such as a skatepark facility for skaters.

It's much easier than you think to get a skatepark built in your town. So easy in fact that even a 12 year old can do it! When I was 12 years old I was an avid skateboarder and my friends and I found ourselves constantly being reprimanded and chased out of industrial parks, school lots, parks, because we had no where else to skate. Our parents would take us to all the local skateparks in other towns because we didn't have our own. We began to wonder why we didn't have a skatepark and decided to ask our township.

We sent a letter to our local council explaining our problem and why we needed a skatepark in our town. We never really expected to get an answer, after all we were just kids. Six months went by before we received a letter inviting us to the next council meeting to discuss our request. The council advised us to prove that there was enough interest in our community to warrant budget spending on such a project. So we armed ourselves with petitions and solicited every student in our school and neighborhood. There was tremendous support and by the next meeting we had our proof. The council gave the go ahead and put the pending skatepark into the new fiscal budget. Luckily for us our community was in the midst of creating a new recreational facility that included soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts, hockey rink, and football fields. Our timing couldn't be more perfect.

The next step in our process was to look for a park design and construction company. We secured a team from California and they helped my friends and I design the perfect skatepark within our townships budget. Skateparks can range anywhere from $25,000 for a small one to $2,000,000 and upwards for a world class facility. Our budget was $125,000 which was plenty for our community. We were able to build a moderate sized park that included a 4 ft, a 6ft, and an 8ft quarter pipe on both ends of the park, a spine in the middle, a tabletop connected to the spine, a 10 step handrail near the back of the park and a bunch of other ramps near the tabletop and spine.

Some other considerations are insurance liability, hours of operation, membership options, and security, all of which can be worked out at your town council meetings. Having a safe place for skate boarders in any community can be accomplished with planning and petitioning your local authorities. There are many skate design companies that will help you develop initial conceptual designs and seek out grant applications and public funding.