It’s not often that the gallery is full at a municipal council meeting. In fact, it’s rare to see a single community member in attendance at the bimonthly meetings.
But on Feb. 16, more than a dozen folks were there to show their support for a youth-led initiative to construct a new concrete skate park in town.
The Jasper Skatepark Committee—made up of youth, parents and community members—presented to council to ask that the land currently being used as a temporary skate park be designated as a permanent location for a brand new park.
“The skate park right now is not designated a skate park,” explained Teen Outreach Worker Anna DeClercq, who has been working with the skatepark committee.
She explained that without that designation, the committee is unable to apply for grants to help with the cost of the design and development of the park.
“One of the stipulations is that you have a designated space for your skate park and right now we don’t have that, so in order to follow through with some of the grants that are available, we need to know that we have land to build a skate park on,” she said.
The existing park is located between the tennis courts and the new Jasper Joint School Facility and is made up of portable features, like table tops, quarter pipes, boxes and curbs. It was developed in 2003 with grant funding and funds raised by the Jasper Skate Association, which no longer exists, and was developed on the basis that the location was temporary.
“It’s such a perfect location,” said Patti Urie, a parent working with the committee, explaining that it’s centrally located and allows students to go to the park on their breaks from school. “We did talk about other spots, but we kept coming back to where it is.”
The new committee hopes to replace the existing park, which Urie described as an eye sore, with a custom, site-built concrete park that incorporates art and landscaping to create a visually appealing and welcoming environment for the entire community, not just skateboarders and BMXers.
Trevor Morgan, vice-president of Calgary’s New Line Skate Parks, has been working with Jasper’s skatepark committee since 2014 and joined the group Feb. 16 to answer council’s questions about development and funding possibilities. Over the past decade, New Line has designed and built parks in more than 30 communities across the province.
“You guys don’t have to reinvent the wheel here,” said Morgan, explaining that Jasper can take lessons from the many other communities that have developed their own skate parks.
Morgan showed council images of some of the parks that New Line has designed, including Winnipeg’s Plaza at the Forks, which is a large scale example of how a park can be built with the whole community in mind, creating greenspace right alongside the park and using art as skateable features to make it visually appealing.
The push for a new park began with high school student Ezra Jenkins, who in 2014 wrote a petition requesting a free, permanent community skate park and dropped it off at Freewheel Cycle, Senate Skate Shop and Source for Sports. It didn’t take long before there were more than 400 signatures and shortly after a group was formed to push the initiative forward.
Jasper’s skate park is about 17,000 square feet. Morgan said the design will likely include somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 square feet worth of skateable features and estimated it would cost between $450,000 to $500,000 to develop.
As well as asking council to designate the land for a skate park, the committee also requested that a municipal employee be assigned to help with the project, particularly grant applications, and it also asked for financial support. So far the group has fundraised $4,500 and it has plans to continue its fundraising efforts to increase that number.
Coun. Rico Damota thanked the group for coming forward with a clear request, as well as a well thought out presentation, and said he is in support of the development of a new skate park in town.
“I think this is great,” he said.
Council will discuss the committee’s requests at its Feb. 23 committee-of-the-whole meeting and it promised to get back to the group with questions, as well as feedback.
Nicole Veerman
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