Skate park meeting slated Tuesday

The effort to get the Kiwanis Club’s skate park built here keeps building momentum, with an organizational meeting planned for this Tuesday (Oct. 29) at 7 p.m. at the Memorial Sports Centre.
“This meeting is really aimed at the organizational aspect of it,” said Kiwanian Steve Maki, who led a very successful first public meeting Oct. 16 which drew up to 200 people to discuss design ideas for the proposed park, scheduled to be built on the old arena ball diamond.
“We’re going to form various committees and get the ball rolling,” said Maki. “Some committees might not have to do anything for a while, while others will.”
Construction of the skate park is hoped to begin by the spring.
While youth certainly were welcome at the first meeting, and will be instrumental in future fundraising, Maki said this meeting is aimed more at adults to form committees, which could handle everything from landing government grants to finding a way to cut costs by getting scrap materials locally.
“We’ll be contacting parents who showed an interest at the first meeting to let them know about this,” Maki noted. “But at the same time, we don’t want to leave anybody out who might not have made the first meeting.”
Maki said the club aims to build a 1,200 sq. ft. concrete park, which resembles a bowl-like, empty swimming pool. The cost—without any savings—could be about $300,000.
A little further down the road, Maki has arranged for Jim Barnum of Victoria, B.C., dubbed the “skate park guru of Canada,” to come here Saturday, Nov. 9 to lend his input into building such a facility.
“His credentials are phenomenal. Anyone who looks for him on the Internet will see that,” said Maki.
Perhaps the most notable of his creations, Barnum was instrumental in establishing a $1.8-million, 75,000 sq. ft. skate park in Victoria a few years ago, he added.
Maki said that while the itinerary of the visit still is being sorted out, Barnum first will meet with the established committees that morning and then with interested local youth in the afternoon.