Posted by: redchapterjubilee July 13, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Tonight…7pm at the Southwood Athletic Complex Teen Center off Rock Prairie in College Station. The City of College Station wants your input on the design of the planned skatepark. We will finally see (I’m hoping) where exactly at Southwood the park will be located, how much space they envision, what type of skatepark the city wants to build, etc. Pretty much the nuts-and-bolts of layout and construction.
You skaters worked your asses off to let CoCS know that a skatepark wasn’t just wanted but needed in our city. You need to show up tonight to let them know how skaters intend on using a skatepark, how it should be designed and what shouldn’t be in the plan.
For starters…I hope the city plans on creating an ample sized park. The city has allocated nearly a million dollars to build the park. I am thinking that the city already owns the part of Southwood Athletic Complex it wants to use, so the money will mostly go for design and construction.
My first worry is that, according to June 12th issue of The Eagle, “The City Council voted to hire Conroe-based Bleyl & Associates for more than $179,000 to design the facility”. So…nearly 20% of the budget will go strictly for hiring these folks just to design the skatepark. A very quick cursory glance at their website turns up zero previous skateboard park experience. I called over to their Conroe office this afternoon and was told they had for certain built one in Conroe and were working on one in Shenandoah. The Conroe facility is at Kasmiersky Park.
It is hard to tell what exactly their skatepark looks like from the city’s information. Luckily, I was able to find something posted on someone’s private blog, just pictures of their kids skating the park. From that link you can see that an existing mixed use court (tennis, 4-square, basketball) has had masonite & steel constructions added on top. Skateboardpark.com lists the features as:
- 6′ halfpipe
- 2 quarterpipes
- vert wall
- 2 fun boxes
- 2 round kinkrails
- 1 flat rail.
The website states that there’s no cost to skate there and pads/helmets are not required.
Not bad. I’ve skated parks in the Seattle area that were equipped similarly, though were constructed completely out of concrete, like the one in Edmonds that I used to skate at that had pretty much all those amenities plus a bowl. The Seattle parks required helmets, though no one was there to police it. If the cops came by and caught you skating without protection they would cite you with a $75 fine.
I look at the Conroe design and I have a hard time thinking that it cost almost $200,000 to design, like the CoCS is paying Bleyl for our park’s design. I was expecting something that would look a little more permanent and not like something the Boom Boom Huck Jam left behind after a skate demo. If you look at Bleyl’s other projects they do a lot of other urban projects in this part of Texas. I suppose you want to help the local firm out, but for the kind of money the citizenry of College Station is forking out to Bleyl I sure hope our park has more of an artisan’s touch than Conroe’s.
What would I like to see. Something like this:
The designer gives no price tag for the above design other than it will cost more than $60,000 to construct. Of course, I have no idea exactly what square footage the city is talking about, but what Conroe is building (plus a bowl and some hips) would be dandy enough…especially if the city insists it look nice and is 100% concrete instead of all ghetto like Conroe’s park and Bryan’s two parks. I think such a design would fit the needs of skaters of all skill levels and would let skaters grow with the park, rather than have something rinky-dink that kids will tire of quickly.
The only way for you to have any say in how this park is designed is for you to show up tonight and tell them what you want! Let them know that you’ve done some homework and have at least some idea of what Bleyl & Associates designs and work with that design, help them augment it to meet our expectations! GO TONIGHT!!!!!
UPDATE: Atarimatt sez he’s heard that Grindline is designing the park but Bleyl is building it? If so, man, look at this shit…
That’s the park Grindline designed in Wichita Falls. I’ve skated on their park in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and it is dope, dope, dope! If this is true then we’ll have a first-class park.
UPDATE II: I went back and checked the most recent Eagle story from last week and apparently Grindline is partnering on the design and/or construction. The story is vague.





