by Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
“I really like that roller,” one teen said as a half-dozen around him nodded. “That looks like a lot of fun.”
Emphasis on the “a lot.”
The whole thing looks like a lot of fun if the reaction from the 30 or so people, mostly dudes, who attended a reveal of the first completed concept of the proposed Jasper skate park, is any indication.
It would cost $700,000 but the executive committee of five led by Darrell Savage believes grants, elbow grease and good luck will see wheels rolling through it by 2019.
“We’re working on a provincial Community Facilities Enhancement Fund grant and the town’s community economic development fund. We got 11,600 votes in the Aviva online contest (for a $100,000 community upgrade). “That’s really good considering the size of the town,” Savage said. “We’ll try again next year.”
The new park would occupy the same space near the high school, today just a concrete pad with temporary features like rails and a small quarter pipe nestled between the soccer and football fields. Like most things in Jasper, it would be bigger than a town this size would normally be able to justify because of the tourist traffic. Red Deer, by contrast, just spent about $1.5 million on a 20,000-square-foot park.
He added he’s visited towns where a skatepark was built in halves, or stages, with the park sitting incomplete because the momentum behind it died.
“You kind of want to hit it while it’s hot,” he said. “This is not a pipe dream. It’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when. It’s a matter of having a motivated team.”
The concept is that of Langley-based New Line Skateparks, which just completed a massive park in Banff, so users could enter at any number of points in the park and “flow” through without having to push again.
This is a big thing in skateboarding circles.
“This is going to be our skatepark for like 50 years, so we want to make sure it’s a legit park that’s going to serve the community,” Savage said. “Thousands of kids are going to use this; I only see usage going up.”
