News is just in that Tony Hawk's foundation will be making a USD 25,000 grant to the skatepartk described here in the Plain Dealer:
Planned skateboard park in Cleveland could have big impact as part of recreation hub in the Flats
Published: Saturday, February 12, 2011, 12:00 PM
Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011, 12:29 PM
By Michelle Jarboe, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When more than 180 skateboarders and BMX-bike riders showed up for a public meeting last April, Cleveland city officials were taken aback.
The crowd wasn't just large. It was young - people in their teens, 20s and 30s. They came from downtown Cleveland, from Parma, Kirtland, Eastlake and Kent. And they were riding a wave of enthusiasm for a municipal project: a skateboarding park in the Flats.
Compared to a downtown casino and a $465 million medical mart, the 15,000-square-foot skatepark doesn't seem like much. But proponents say the small project could have a big impact, attracting skaters from across Northeast Ohio, capturing traffic from other states and rounding out a recreation hub on the Cuyahoga River.
Mayor Frank Jackson has asked Cleveland City Council to approve $550,000 for the skatepark as part of the city's 2011 capital improvements plan. If council members concur, construction on the park might start this summer and the facility could open in 2012.
"For about half-a-million dollars, you can create another stop on the tour that skaters are taking for pretty much nine months out of the year," said Vince Frantz, a devoted skater and executive director of the Public Square Group, a Lakewood nonprofit focused on bringing skateboarding to neighborhoods. "People are leaving the city a handful of weekends out of the summer, the fall. All of a sudden, we're going to be right in the middle of all this traffic between Pittsburgh, Columbus and Detroit."
Cleveland's previous skatepark attracted plenty of wheeled traffic to North Coast Harbor. But the steel ramps, left over from the Gravity Games and turned into a municipal park in 2004, were falling apart when the city dismantled them last year. The new park on Merwin Avenue would be more than twice as large, poured from concrete and designed to last decades with little maintenance. Nestled on the Columbus Road Peninsula, the park would be wrapped by the river and surrounded by industry and recreation.
"It was a really dramatic site, and then the rowing foundation came along and took the site next to it," said Eric Wobser, executive director of the Ohio City Near West Development Corp. and a former city employee who shepherded the skatepark project. "There's a lot of people-powered recreation down there."
The Cleveland Rowing Foundation is preparing to open Rivergate Park, a 6.5-acre facility that replaced a longtime marina. Rowers will push their shells into the river in March, and public kayaking could start in May. Last week, foundation officials said that USRowing, the governing body for the sport, is considering Rivergate Park as the location for a major national race in fall 2012.
On Columbus Road, a nonprofit bicycle co-op that runs classes and sells and rents bikes recently moved to a larger building. And long-term plans for the peninsula involve a large public park and connections to a network of bicycle and pedestrian trails running from Tuscarawas County to Lake Erie.
The grit and drama of the Flats made it an attractive site for a skatepark, a concrete facility that requires little maintenance and could last decades. The city of Cleveland has allocated $550,000 to design and build the park in its 2011 capital improvements plan. Proponents say the small project could have a big impact, attracting skaters from across Northeast Ohio and capturing traffic from other states.
"It makes sense when you look at where the Flats is going," Frantz said of the skatepark site. "If there was not a larger plan that we're involved in, then it would sort of be a lonely place. This guarantees foot traffic. If the plan for the Flats is to lean more toward recreation and people buying condos and redeveloping the buildings, you have instant traffic from the day the ribbon's cut to the day the snow falls."
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