Company on board with skatepark project

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Company on board with skatepark project

Mike Shapiro from Seattle-based Grindline Skateparks Inc. came to Wilmington to meet with local people who plan to build a skatepark and utilize the firm as designer and builder. (News Journal Photo/Gary Huffenberger)

Company on board with skatepark project

GARY HUFFENBERGER
Staff Writer/ wnewsj.com

Who knows, maybe Wilmington will be the site where a new skateboarding maneuver will be invented or perfected. Either way, odds are good it will become a place where skateboarders will enjoy lots of recreational activity when a planned skatepark is built at J.W. Denver Williams Jr. Memorial Park.

Progress continues on the local dream to create a captivating, world-class skatepark facility. Recently, a representative from Seattle-based Grindline Skateparks Inc. met with the project’s leaders to fashion a conceptual design. Local skatepark supporters have collected enough funds to pay for the design, $16,900.

When the preliminary design becomes an approved final concept, the local people will have a picture of the proposed skatepark plus the support of Wilmington City Hall. Those two factors will boost chances to receive grants to construct a facility.

“We’re going to be creative. It’s going to be an interesting park and they’re going to put this together for us,” said Jen Stewart, one of the leaders in the movement to make an outstanding skatepark that will be a tourist draw.

“We want this park to be a destination spot. We [the region] do have the Kettering Street Plaza which is a tourist attraction in itself, and then we have Skatetopia in Athens and the Athens Skatepark. So we are located right in between those two destination spots,” Stewart pointed out. “Wilmington will see a lot of traffic from pro skaters.”

Founded in 1990, Grindline Skateparks Inc. has designed and built more than 100 skateparks to date, from Orcas Island in Washington state to the island of Okinawa in Japan. Probably the proudest example in its portfolio is a $2 million skatepark it completed for the city of Houston.

The skatepark in Wilmington will be named after Wilmington’s own Sgt. Steven Daniel Conover, a skater who was killed in Iraq by hostile fire on Nov. 2, 2003.

Commenting on Grindline Skateparks Inc., Stewart said, “We’re pretty sold on them. We’ve all skated Grindline parks and we like them. We know they’re quality, we know that it’s what we’re looking for in a skatepark. We’re pretty excited to have them on board with us.”

Some of the features local skateboard enthusiasts mentioned to Mike Shapiro from Grindline Skateparks were to include a shallow part — a beginner bowl — as well as stacked ledges, a wavy ledge, lots of pockets in the flow bowl, handrails, perhaps a stage.

Stewart said local supporters definitely want the facility to have a flow park and some bowls, and are hoping to integrate a street course, a love seat, a death box and pyramid tips.

The facility will be formed with custom sculpted concrete.

The city has designated an 18,000 square feet area of city parkland for the skatepark. An old restroom building will be torn down as part of the project.

There are many opportunities for donations and volunteer work during the construction phase, said Shapiro. Examples include landscaping, lighting, lodging for the construction crew who will be here for weeks, assisting with the crew’s meals, providing bottled water and so forth.